Officials at the US Embassy in The Bahamas are refuting online claims that US visa fees increased as of January 1st. A flyer circulating on social media shows new fees of up to $505 for various types of travel visas.

US Embassy Consular Section Chief, Carina Canaan told ZNS News, “we know that there is a lot of misinformation that has been spread on social media about an increase in visa fees. So we’d like to let everyone know that the fees for a B1/B2 visitor visa and F1 student visas for Bahamians has not changed, it remains $185.00.”

Canaan encouraged the public to verify information before sharing or acting on it. She said, “in general we shouldn’t be relying on information received on a WhatsApp text where we can’t see where the original URL or link is from, what’s the source of it. Everyone should go, especially for something like applying for a US visa to the original government source. Go to the official source it’s bs.usembassy.gov, or visas page links from there. It has all the information the anyone needs to apply for a visa.”

The counselor section chief also spoke about third party companies that apply for visas on behalf of others. “We think that the visa application process is pretty straight forward as long as you’re going to the right place to start that process and the right place is our official US Embassy website. We have heard that there are a lot of third parties out there, companies, that are charging up to $500 to do this. Obviously everyone can make that decision for themselves if they want to pay that extra money but they don’t have to. The cost for applying for a visa is $185.00.”