Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the United Kingdom has announced an increase in the cost of visa applications fees paid by immigrants.
Sunak claimed in a statement on Friday that immigrants applying for visas will be required to pay an substantial increase in the cost of the National Health Service (NHS), which is supported by the government.
As these fees have not been recently increased, Sunak indicated that the increment was fair and justified.
The PM said that because there wouldn’t be any new borrowing or expenditure to pay for the increases, this decision wouldn’t affect inflation.
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 those fees will 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.”
The announcement is coming a few weeks after the United States embassy said it is 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.
Ada Peter
