The US passport application fees will be costlier by $12 from March 8 this year and a person applying for L-1 visa will have to pay an additional $500 fee.

These are part of new charges for consular services in American diplomatic missions in New Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata.

Persons applying for 'blanket' L-1 visa will have to pay this $500 "fraud prevention and detection fee" at the time of submitting their papers.

This fee must be paid via bank draft for Rs 22,000 made out to the American Embassy or to the American Consulate General where the applicant will be applying, the US Embassy here said.

The fee does not apply to any spouse or children applying for a L-2 visa. A surcharge of $12 is being added to the current US passport application fees.

This fee will be used to increase border security by strengthening the security of the passport adjudication process and the physical passport itself.  It will also be used to support the issuance of newly redesigned passport containing new security features.

One of these is the addition of a biometric identifier. A chip will be embedded in the cover and will contain the same information that appears on the data page, including the bearer's picture as the biometric.

Another surcharge of $45 will be added to the current fees for immigrant visas.

These changes include the developmental and operating costs of migrating the immigrant visa to a machine-readable format using a secure visa foil and implementation of digital photo and electronic fingerprint collection as required by recent legislative mandates.

The Embassy announced a reduction in the fee from $300 to $165 for issuance of a transportation letter for Legal Permanent Resident Aliens to re-enter the US from abroad.

There will be a hike in the fee for adjudicating an application for Returning Resident status from $360 to $400.

All these changes are in accordance with the new US department of state directives and are applicable worldwide, the Embassy said.

The Consolidate Appropriations Act, 2005, has created the new $500 fee, the proceeds of which will be used to assist in detecting and deterring fraud in H-1B and L visas.

The department of homeland security will collect the new fraud prevention and detection fee domestically from employers in US filing a petition to initially grant an alien H-1B or L status or to obtain authorisation for an alien having such status to change employers.

Visa sections at US Embassies and Consulates overseas have been instructed to collect a similar $500 fee on the applicants for L-1 visas under blanket L petitions as their employers would not have already been charged this fee domestically.