What an EB-2 NIW Costs
Three cost components, why we quote flat fees, and why the dollar figures on this page are deliberately few.
An EB-2 NIW has three cost components: government filing fees paid to USCIS, optional premium processing, and attorney fees. Only one dollar figure appears on this page — the premium processing fee, $2,965 as of August 2026 — because USCIS revises its fees by regulation and a stale number on a law firm's website is worse than no number. For the rest: government fees live on the current USCIS fee schedule (Form G-1055), and our own fees are flat, quoted in consultation once we understand your case. This page explains each component, what drives attorney fees up or down across the market, and why we price the way we do.
Who this page is for
Budgeting an NIW means comparing quotes, deciding whether premium processing is worth it, and working out why attorney fees for the same petition type vary so widely from firm to firm.
This page will not give you a total. It will give you the structure of the total, the authoritative source for every government number, and the questions that make attorney-fee quotes comparable.
The three components
Every NIW budget breaks into the same three pieces, paid to different parties at different times.
Government filing fees go to USCIS with the Form I-140. They are set by regulation, they change periodically, and they are owed regardless of who prepares the petition.
Premium processing is optional and also paid to USCIS — a separate fee, requested on Form I-907, that buys expedited handling. You can skip it entirely.
Attorney fees pay for the legal work: case strategy, developing the proposed endeavor, building the evidence record, drafting the petition letter and support letters, and managing the filing. This is the component that varies across firms — and the one where the quotes you gather are least comparable on their face.
Government fees: read them off the schedule, not off a blog
We deliberately do not print the Form I-140 filing fee or its associated fees here. USCIS fees are set by regulation and revised over time — the premium processing fee alone has been adjusted twice since it first reached NIW petitions in 2022 — and immigration sites are full of confidently stated numbers that were right when written and wrong when read. The authoritative source is the current USCIS fee schedule, published as Form G-1055. Check it when you budget, and check it again the week you file.
The one figure we will commit to in print, because we can date it: premium processing costs $2,965 as of August 2026, set by a January 2026 fee rule that took effect March 1, 2026. It is optional. Premium processing has been available to all pending and newly filed NIW petitions since January 30, 2023, so it can be added at filing or later, while the case is pending — which means it is a decision you can defer rather than a cost you must commit to on day one. Whether it is worth paying is a strategy question; our premium processing page takes it up properly.
One scoping note, so the arithmetic adds up: this page covers the I-140 petition stage. The later application for permanent residence itself is a separate stage with its own government costs — something we map out for your specific path in consultation.
Attorney fees: flat, and quoted after we understand your case
Locke Immigration Law quotes flat fees for NIW work. You learn the full fee before we begin, and it does not grow because the case took more hours than either of us guessed. We price this way because open-ended hourly billing puts the attorney's incentive and the client's interest in quiet conflict — every question you ask has a meter on it — and because a petition of this kind is a definable project: a known set of deliverables that an experienced firm can scope up front.
If USCIS issues a Request for Evidence, responding to it is a separate engagement with its own flat fee, quoted after we have read the RFE. We price it separately for a reason: an RFE response is real legal work whose scope depends entirely on what the notice challenges and what the record already contains — quoting it sight unseen would mean either padding every petition fee to cover a contingency most clients may not want to prepay, or lowballing work we have not seen. We would rather quote you accurately twice than vaguely once.
We do not publish our fee amounts on this page; they are quoted in consultation, matched to your case. The FAQ below says why in plain terms.
Why NIW attorney fees vary so much across firms
Gather three NIW quotes and you may see numbers far enough apart to make you suspect a mistake. Usually nothing is mistaken — the quotes cover different amounts of lawyering under the same product name. When you compare, ask what each fee actually buys on three dimensions.
Strategy and endeavor development. The proposed endeavor is the foundation of all three prongs, and framing it well is the most consequential legal work in the case. Some engagements include developing it with you from scratch; others expect you to arrive with the endeavor already defined and simply package what you hand over.
The evidence record. Petitions differ in how much curation the evidence gets — whether every exhibit is selected to advance a specific prong, or the file is assembled from whatever the client supplies.
Letter drafting. Support letters and the petition letter can be drafted by the firm around the record, or templated and sent to your recommenders to complete. The difference is invisible in a quote and very visible in the filing.
None of this makes a leaner engagement wrong — some cases arrive well developed and need less. It means a fee comparison is only meaningful once you know the scope behind each number.
Ready to discuss your case?
Schedule a consultation with Loren Locke to see if this visa is the right fit.
Schedule a ConsultationHow we handle this
We quote a flat fee in consultation, after we understand your endeavor, your record, and your timeline — not from a rate card that ignores all three.
The quote is the price. It covers the scoped engagement end to end, and it does not creep.
If an RFE arrives, we read it first and then quote the response as its own flat fee — you decide with the notice and the number both in front of you.
And if what we learn in consultation says your money would be wasted — the endeavor is not ready, or a different route fits better — we say so before you spend it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Other EB-2 NIW Resources
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The two physician waivers — the three-prong test and the statutory five-year shortage-area route — plus the J-1 layer.
ExploreScenarios
Real situations: an RFE on a self-filed petition, a denial, a pending PERM, a later EB-1A.
ExploreCompare Other Paths
EB-2 NIW measured against EB-1A, employer-sponsored EB-2, EB-1B, and the O-1A.
ExploreGet a real number for your case
You leave a consultation with a flat-fee quote built around what your petition actually needs, and a clear itemization of what goes to USCIS instead of to us — no meter, no creep.
Immigration counsel to Fortune 500 employers at a national firm · Adjudicated 12,000+ visas at the U.S. Consulate, Mexico · Working in U.S. immigration since 2008
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