Do not assume a name correction changes the route or waives a charge. Under current official instructions, an individual principal has a US$15,000 nonrefundable processing fee and US$1 million gift, and each joining eligible spouse or child adds the same published amounts. Actual correction procedures should be confirmed through the official case instructions.
Separate document preparation costs from program payments
Ask for the cost and scope of any required document retrieval, translation or professional assistance. Do not automatically pay a second processing fee because an adviser notices a spelling issue; obtain the applicable official direction for the situation. The gift is requested after successful vetting.
Other fees and services may have different terms from the expressly nonrefundable processing fee. Money leaves early here for a reason that has nothing to do with the program: document work is the part a family can start immediately, so it starts, and translations and courier charges accumulate before anyone has confirmed which documents the process actually asks for. Order the spending the other way.
Establish what is required, identify which records are missing, and only then commission retrieval, certification or translation — and get a price per item rather than an estimate for the set. Keep the published program charges on their own line, unchanged by any of this, and take the amounts and their conditions from the official instructions rather than from a recollection of them.