[You:]So, why does it cost hundereds of dollars to fly from the west coast to the east coast?
You have just got to be kidding. A Jet airplane costs tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to buy, and costs tens of thousands of dollars per hour in operating costs. Fill a plane with a couple hundred people, and send it across the country, and it's a few hundred bucks a head, allowing for some profit for the company to remain in business.
Paper, on the other hand, costs a few pennies a page, and government workers cost some tens of dollars an hour in salary. Yet, a form that occupies three or four pages, and requires three rubber stamps and a single explanatory paragraph to be authored (if, in fact, it isn't a form letter which it probably is) that shouldn't take more than 20 minutes to write, and copies (10 cents a page) made, and return postage to be added ... and the government doesn't have to make a profit ... and this service costs $100 or $200; what you have is extortion.
Oh, that's right, we have to pay for all the nice submachine guns and silencers and ballistic vests and goggles and jackboots that INS agents wear, as seen in Miami. (To better "serve and protect" us.) Does the INS lose them as fast as the FBI does?
[Me:]So, why does it cost $200 to send a form to the INS?
[You:]So, why does it cost hundereds of dollars to fly from the west coast to the east coast?
You have just got to be kidding. A Jet airplane costs[...]
It is possible that Marine Inspector is not an idiot, but is actually making a subtle point about competition. Not likely, but possible.