British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced an increase in visa application fee paid by immigrants.
The announcement came after a
speech regarding an increase in public sector wages.
Sunak confirmed that part of
the funding for the wage increase will be raised from the foreign migrants who
come to the United Kingdom to live and work, the British media said.
He also said the surcharge paid
for the state-funded national health service (NHS) by visa applicants by
immigrants will “increase significantly”.
The PM, had said a few weeks
earlier, at the United States embassy that he would be increasing fees for
processing non-immigrant visa (NIV) applications.
The US embassy, according to a
statement on its website said the new fees for various visa categories will be
implemented from June 17, 2023.
Sunak explained that this was
“entirely right” as these fees have not been increased recently.
He said, “If we’re going to
prioritise paying public sector workers more, that money has to come from
somewhere else because I’m not prepared to put up people’s taxes and I don’t
think it would be responsible or right to borrow more because that would just
make inflation worse
“So, what we have done are two
things to find this money. The first is, we are going to increase the charges
that we have for migrants who are coming to this country when they apply for
visas and indeed something called the immigration health surcharge (IHS), which
is the levy that they pay to access the NHS.
“All of those fees are going to
go up and that will raise over £1 billion. So, across the board visa
application fees are going to go up significantly and similarly for the IHS.”
According to Sunak, this move
will have no effect on inflation because there would be no new borrowing or
spending to fund the increases.
He said the government believes
it is appropriate given that the costs have risen since the last hike.
In a tweet, Sunak said: “I just
announced a fair way to end the strikes – and already all teaching unions are
backing it. It’s a fair deal for workers. And a fair deal for the British
taxpayer. This is a major breakthrough for parents and families across the
country.”
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