British visas to be dearer for Indians, non-EU residents

The UK has steeply increased the visa fee for those coming from India and other non-EU countries as tourists, to work, stay or study and settle down. It has also announced a series of measures to curb illegal immigrants from operating in the country.

The joint announcement by the Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office follows the biggest shake up of the UK's immigration system in its history last summer by the Home Secretary.

Under the new visa fee, which will come into effect from April 1 this year, the basic visitor visa fee would go up from £50 (Rs 4,250 approximately) to £63, student visa fee from £85 to £99, Long Term Visa (including Work Permit and Highly Skilled Migrant Visa Programme) from £85 to £200 and settlement visa from £260 to £500. The transit visa fee would go up from £30£ to £44.

Glyn Williams, Director, Business Development, UK visas, said the new fees would help improve the visa system and meet the increasing operational costs. "At the same time, we want to ensure that Britain continues to attract the legal visitors, students and migrants who contribute so much to the UK's economic and cultural life," he said.

Williams said the money would be spent on providing additional enforcement capacity to deal with illegal immigrants, help prosecutions and enforcement staff, provide extra detention capacity (building new detention centres), increasing the department's ability to provide compliance and employee verification services for those employing foreign workers, and increasing removal of illegal immigrants.

Immigration minister Liam Byrne said,"We believe that it is fair that those who benefit most from using our immigration system "" those who come here to live and work "" should pay more to fund the system."