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Cait Conley won the crowded Democratic primary Tuesday and will face Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in the general election.

DHS Proposes To Increase Citizenship Application Fees By 80%

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration on June 23 proposed increasing the cost of becoming an American citizen in a move that would nearly double the price of naturalization.

The proposal would raise the government’s fee for filing an online naturalization application form, the N-400, from $710 to $1,280, an 80-percent increase, according to the proposal from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), published in the Federal Register on Tuesday.

For paper filings of the N-400, DHS said that it wants to raise the fee from $760 to $1,330, an increase of 75 percent.

For online filings of the N-336, a form requesting a hearing on naturalization proceedings, the fee would increase from $780 to $1,425, an 83 percent increase.

The paper filing fee for Form N-336 would rise from $830 to $1,475, a 77.7-percent increase.

“Although DHS has historically limited the fees for (citizenship-related applications) to fulfill previous administrations’ priorities of encouraging naturalization, DHS no longer believes naturalization benefit requests should get lower fees at the potential expense of other immigration benefits,” DHS said in its proposed regulation.

DHS officials also said they were moving to remove some fee waivers for poorer applicants. Those waivers would be given only to people who are trying to become citizens by joining the U.S. military, it said.

Should the proposal be accepted, according to the agency, the increases in fees would bring in more than $430 million each year from prospective citizens. It added that around 1 million people seek to become naturalized citizens each year.

The decision drew some pushback from the American Immigration Council. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a fellow with the group, said in a post on X that he believes the DHS proposal is targeting people who have green cards, or permanent residency status, from becoming American citizens.

“The U.S. government for years tried to keep the costs artificially low to encourage more people with green cards to apply for citizenship,” he wrote. “No more, it seems!”

DHS will be accepting public comments until Aug. 24, 2026.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump’s administration has tightened rules around legal immigration and naturalization. In May, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said it would require immigrants seeking green cards to apply from their home country.

“We’re returning to the original intent of the law to ensure aliens navigate our nation’s immigration system properly,” USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said in a statement last month.

“This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes. When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the U.S. illegally after being denied residency.”

Weeks before that, DHS said that immigrants who have made statements that it deems extremist would face closer scrutiny from immigration officials, with a spokesperson saying that such comments “may raise serious concerns for USCIS personnel reviewing an applicant’s file, ​including espousing terrorist ideologies, expressing hatred for American values, advocating for the violent overthrow of the United States ​government, or providing material support to terrorist organizations.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 21:45

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From Bartenders To Builders: Data Centers Drive America's Blue-Collar Comeback

A seismic shift is underway in the U.S. labor market after a quarter-century of America's industrial base being hollowed out following China's entry into the WTO, a period marked by the decline of goods-producing jobs while leisure and hospitality employment surged.

The driver of the current job shift is the data center buildout phase, which is expected to require millions of new jobs across construction, manufacturing, electrical trades, power infrastructure, and the broader industrial supply chain. Additionally, reshoring critical supply chains will require even more goods-producing jobs, which are high-paying and pay far more than low-wage jobs such as bartending and waiting.

Nancy Lazar, Piper Sandler's chief global economist and head of the firm's economics research team, published a note on Sunday showing what happened to the U.S. labor market after China joined the WTO in 2001.

The result was a long-term hollowing out of America's industrial base, marked by a sharp decline in higher-paying goods-producing jobs while lower-quality leisure and hospitality jobs surged. Education and health services jobs also continued to move up and to the right.

But there was good news around 2010, when goods-producing jobs began to reverse. Lazar's note suggests that the trend is now set to accelerate as the data center, power grid, and AI infrastructure buildout drives a new wave of demand for industrial labor.

Lazar continued:

Bullish On Goods Producing Jobs vs. Hotel & Restaurant Jobs.

When China joined the WTO in 2001, U.S. goods producing jobs began a decade of decline, while leisure & hospitality, and education & health jobs continued to rise …

… so today, goods producing jobs are less than half those of low-paying service jobs – their share was over 50% in the mid-1980s.

That employment mix shift gave us the bifurcated consumer, as lower paying jobs gained share. Goods producing jobs pay more than overall service producing jobs – and lots more than leisure & hospitality, or education & health care jobs.

Good news: That mix is now shifting the other way, as the long-running (not just tech) capex cycle raises productivity and margins, encouraging adding headcount.

Look at relative earnings growth, by sector, below.

Combine that with falling energy prices and (we believe) slowing core inflation, and we're on the lookout for narrowing bifurcation among consumers. That would indeed be good news. We're watching our Daily consumer confidence survey, non-investor component, closely.

Industrial labor demand is likely to remain a strong trend for several years, with $800 billion in hyperscaler capex being deployed for data center buildouts just this year alone - and don't worry about humanoid robots entering construction sites until the next decade.

However, college graduates, mostly burdened by insurmountable student debt, are watching in disbelief as corporate America rapidly automates white-collar jobs out of existence.

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Most and Least AI-Exposed Jobs  

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Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 21:20

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