Companies budget the petition fee and forget the evidence: translations, corporate-record retrieval, premises costs that must exist before filing, and the extension petition a year later. Use the USCIS fee schedule for government charges and plan the rest separately.
Budget the new office as a business expense with an immigration deadline
The government fees for Form I-129, the applicable fraud-prevention and other statutory charges, and any premium-processing request are published on the USCIS fee schedule and should be read from there rather than copied from an old estimate. The larger spending sits outside the fee table. A new-office petition needs a lease that is signed and paid before filing, so the subsidiary carries rent on empty premises while the petition is pending.
French corporate records, financial statements and employment documents must be translated. Someone inside the company spends days assembling payroll registers, contracts and photographs of the premises, and that time is a real cost. Then, twelve months after approval, the extension petition repeats the exercise with a year of U.S.
financial records, so the bookkeeping system in Colorado should be designed on day one to produce them. Keep the family's L-2 applications, the husband's licensing and the household's relocation on separate lines from the company's costs.