The arc of a self-funding agency.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services · DHS
USCIS is a bureau, not a Cabinet department, so it has no row in OMB's Historical Tables and no five-decade budget-authority line to chart — and this monitor does not invent one. The honest arc is the recent record the Budget-in-Brief and the enacted law document: across FY2025 actuals, the FY2026 continuing-resolution level, and the FY2027 request, fees keep funding almost the entire agency while the appropriated base Congress sets each year collapses. Every figure recomputes against its source.
Fee share — earliest vintage
—
Fee share — FY2027 request
—
Appropriated base
—
FY2027 request vs. FY2025 actual
Total budget authority
—
FY2027 request · —% fees
Fee-funded vs appropriated — the arc across three vintages
$ in thousands · nominal · the two dialects never conflatedBars are scaled to each vintage's Total Budget Authority. The cyan share is fee revenue — spending funded by applicant and petitioner fees, not appropriated by Congress — and it barely moves. What moves is the thin amber appropriated sliver, which shrinks into the FY2027 request.