Uk Visa Costs Increases, Proposal For April 2011

[mikeyp]

here's the UK Border agency proposed UK visa cost increase for implementation from April 2011

CLICK ON LINK

http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/aboutus/fees-table-spring-2011.pdf

[theoldgit]

So increases in visit and settlement visas of about 8.5%, roughly double the rate of inflation, during a time where most public servants, the people that actually do the work, are having their salaries frozen.

[KKvampire]

Its about making Money, Even for admin work now Governments Screw us all the time. and the UK's sucks as much as any other.

[bangkockney]

A recent report onto the UKBA was highly critical and did conclude that revenue generation was a primary focus.

UKBA is also shedding a large number of staff.

I'll dig out the link when I'm back at my desk.

[theoldgit]

UKBA is also shedding a large number of staff.

Yes very true, many of my friends are fearful of being made redundant with the terms being very derisory. For the staff that remain in post, the terms and conditions are being drastically downsized. And whilst this is not designed, or likely to, gain sympathy from the great British public, it re-enforces my view that with price increases at double the cost of inflation and, some, operating costs being reduced, this is little more than a cash generating exercise, as you have pointed out.

[ThaiVisaExpress]

They should re locate them to Bangkok

[bangkockney]

I'll dig out the link when I'm back at my desk.

Some comments of note:

A Thematic Inspection of the PBS Tier 2 Skilled Workers - Independent Chief Inspector of the UKBA

We found there was a very clear disparity between the different targets and benchmarks for processing applications made in the United Kingdom and overseas. These ranged from five cases per day in Sheffield to potentially 65 cases for applications made in one of Manila’s spokes. However we could find no rationale for the difference.

We found a further inconsistency in that overseas teams have cumulative targets to deal with 100% of cases within set periods of time. However, we found no target in place for processing United Kingdom cases beyond the initial target to process 75% of cases within four weeks.

I found inconsistent approaches being adopted in regards to decision making. I strongly believe that an applicant should receive the same level of service wherever they submit their application and I would expect the Agency to implement and uphold a consistent approach worldwide. Applicants should not have to make and pay for subsequent applications if minor omissions can be addressed with minimal effort by the Agency.

We found different approaches to the quality checking of decisions on Tier 2 cases by managers across the different locations we inspected. There were inconsistent approaches, not only between posts but also between individual teams and managers. We found that very few successful applications were checked, and the numbers of refused applications checked varied significantly between locations in the cases that we sampled.[The guidance states that the

minimum number of PBS refused decisions that must be subject to an ECM review is 0%]

...we were concerned to find the 28 day deadline [for Administrative Reviews] was significantly exceeded in all three cases with processing times of 44, 140, and 142 working days. We found no evidence of letters being sent to the applicants to explain there would be delays in reviewing the decisions. We found similar problems and made recommendations for improvement in our reports following our inspections of the Chennai and Kuala Lumpur visa sections.

Although UK Border Agency guidance stipulates that administrative reviews should be carried out by Entry Clearance Managers, managers in Manila took the decision to ask experienced Entry Clearance Officers to undertake reviews on a temporary basis to help clear the backlog.

Many staff perceived that quality of decision making and controlling immigration were not as much of a priority for the UK Border Agency as generating income and providing customer service.

From the Public and Commercial Services Union

The Permanent Under Secretary of State issued a Global email to staff, setting out the estimated number of job losses over that four-year period, including:

* 5,200 jobs to be lost in UKBA

* 650 jobs to be lost in Home Office HQ

* 600 jobs to be lost in IPS

* 100 jobs to be lost in CRB.

The email made it clear that these predicted job losses are in addition to the c2000 job losses already suffered in the Home Department this year – taking the total number of Home Office jobs being lost to a massive 8,500.

[VisasPlus]

I have no idea how to put links in here, so maybe 7x7 will sort it out for me ? More interesting for me are the two following points:

1. Today, the Embassy changed their exchange rate to 52 Baht to the GBP. This makes all of their services more expensive. I would love to get 52 Baht to the GBP !

2. The link I can't do is the Ministerial Statement on the new visa fees. The Appendix shows the actual Unit Cost of processing a visa. It makes interesting reading, especially the Unit Cost for a sttlement visa as compared to the fee they charge ! The link is:

http://www.ukba.home...spring-2011.pdf

You will have to copy and paste it into your address bar if 7x7 doesn't change it to a link.

Edit. Actually, the link seems to work

Edited March 1, 2011 by VisasPlus

[beano2274]

I noticed that the Visitor Visa cost will go up (6 month) from 3500 to 3640baht in March.

[VisasPlus]

I noticed that the Visitor Visa cost will go up (6 month) from 3500 to 3640baht in March.

Yes. That is the difference the exchange rate makes. The increased visa fees ( from 6th April ) will raise the visit visa cost from 70 GBP ( 3640 Baht) to 76 GBP ( 3952 Baht)

[bangkockney]

I have no idea how to put links in here, so maybe 7x7 will sort it out for me ? More interesting for me are the two following points:

1. Today, the Embassy changed their exchange rate to 52 Baht to the GBP. This makes all of their services more expensive. I would love to get 52 Baht to the GBP !

Do you have any idea where they could get this figure from?

Even the spot rate from OANDA is nowhere near 52! OANDA is what the UKBA ask applicants to use when converting foreign currency balances to GBP to assess maintenance or earnings.

Do you know from experience VP if they are free to choose whatever exchange rate they like?

[theoldgit]

Do you know from experience VP if they are free to choose whatever exchange rate they like?

They used to set it locally, but it has to be cleared centrally. They try to set a realistic rate so that they will not having to keep changing, but of course they err on their side.

I always think that it's ironic that if you use a UK bank card, you will lose out both ways, once when you pay in Thai Baht, at the poor rate, and then when it's coverted into GBP with the banks own loading.

Looking at the unit cost again, on the surface it looks like six month Visit Visas are a bargain as they seem to be charged at far less than the unit cost, unlike long term and settlement visas. But when they work out the unit costs it will be throughout the organisation not just Bangkok. So a station that only processes a few applications per month would have a unit cost of far more than Bangkok, who process many and employ a number of locally employed staff who are far cheaper to employ than UK based staff with all their on costs. I don't know if it's still the case but Bangkok used to be one of the stations that didn't need their visa section budget topped up from the centre.

[VisasPlus]

Do you know from experience VP if they are free to choose whatever exchange rate they like?

They used to set it locally, but it has to be cleared centrally. They try to set a realistic rate so that they will not having to keep changing, but of course they err on their side.

I always think that it's ironic that if you use a UK bank card, you will lose out both ways, once when you pay in Thai Baht, at the poor rate, and then when it's coverted into GBP with the banks own loading.

Looking at the unit cost again, on the surface it looks like six month Visit Visas are a bargain as they seem to be charged at far less than the unit cost, unlike long term and settlement visas. But when they work out the unit costs it will be throughout the organisation not just Bangkok. So a station that only processes a few applications per month would have a unit cost of far more than Bangkok, who process many and employ a number of locally employed staff who are far cheaper to employ than UK based staff with all their on costs. I don't know if it's still the case but Bangkok used to be one of the stations that didn't need their visa section budget topped up from the centre.

You are right about how they set the exchange rate. It is not set by the Visa Section, but by the Management Section who deal with all the financial aspects of running an Embassy.

The unit costs are indeed interesting. I believe that the Bangkok Embassy receives about 60,000 applications a year. So, if they were all Visit applications the fees would be in the region of.............errrr.... four and half million GBP ! If they were all Settlement applications that would be...............ummm..............more than 48 Million GBP !!!!!! My maths must be wrong ?????? Wow - do you think they want to outsource the operation ? When someone corrects my maths, I'll think about it again . Of course you have to deduct the "unit costs" but it seems like good money to me.

Edited March 1, 2011 by VisasPlus

[7by7]

Correct me if I'm wrong, VP, but this money does not stay with the embassy; it goes to the treasury?

It should, of course, be remembered that it was a political decision taken by Blair and Brown that the UKBA should pay for itself (make a profit?) which means all the activities they cannot charge for, IOs at ports of entry, processing EEA applications etc., have to be funded from visa, LTR and naturalisation fees.

Despite vociferous opposition from both the Tories and LibDems when fees for in country applications were introduced and existing fees first increased by amounts way above inflation, it seems that the coalition is determined to continue with this policy.

Obviously in setting new fees the Minister is acting on advice from civil servants, but is that advice coming from the UKBA, Home Office, FCO, or Treasury?

I should add that I have no objection to applicants paying a fair fee based upon the cost of processing their application; but these are not fair fees and have not been ever since Blair and Brown saw the UKBA as an easy way of making money which affects a very small minority of British voters. Let's face it, chaps, the majority of British people, if they had an opinion at all, would say that the more money the government can squeeze from immigrants, the better!

[theoldgit]

7by7

I don't think it's as simple as saying that it all goes back to The Treasury, it all goes into what I can only describe as a giant virtual pot. The cash received for all services go into that pot and running costs will come out of it, it's then topped up from The Treasury as required. Some stations are self sufficient and don't require topping up, Bangkok used to be but I don't know if that's still the case some are not.

Even then local managers cannot simply spend any excess of income over expenditure, they have to have their running costs approved by the centre well before the beginning of the business year, their projected budgets are examined at a series of budget challenge meetings with Treasury officials, and believe me they are challenging.

The same thing happens at a higher level when budgets and fees to be charged worldwide are set, I know that some stations are net contributors whilst my department had a massive budget expenditure and no income. The same goes to, as you rightly say, border controls but also enforcement and there is massive HQ cost, don't forget that Lin Homer was on about £250,000 a year, so yes the proposed fees are set by Civil Servants, be they UKBA, FCO or Treasury and submitted to ministers for approval, which they always are.

[ThaiVisaExpress]

What would be beneficial is they actually process an application and not miss various documents.

[SGD]

All relative to the elasticity of demand. Visas to the UK from Bangkok are relatively price inelastic. They could charge £5000 for settlement and people would still find it.

[bobrussell]

Looks like our daughters ILR is going to change from the expected £250 to an unbelievable £486 in one hit! What the heck are these applications going to cost next year?

[anterian]

Whilst the origins and history of passports is easy to trace, that of visas is obscure. They seem to be a relatively new (the last few decades) invention designed to make money for the issuing countries. However, recently some countries have discovered that scrapping visas actually brings more visitors and foreign currency than visa fees generate.

Here is an interesting block chart (histogram), of the increasing expansion of this money making racket.

http://www.google.com/search?q=history+of+visas&hl=en&safe=off&sa=G&prmd=ivns&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=6hVzTaSGCsSqrAeLt63SCg&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&ved=0CEUQ5wIwCg

[Eff1n2ret]

Whilst the origins and history of passports is easy to trace, that of visas is obscure. They seem to be a relatively new (the last few decades) invention designed to make money for the issuing countries. However, recently some countries have discovered that scrapping visas actually brings more visitors and foreign currency than visa fees generate.

Here is an interesting block chart (histogram), of the increasing expansion of this money making racket.

http://www.google.com/search?q=history+of+visas&hl=en&safe=off&sa=G&prmd=ivns&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=6hVzTaSGCsSqrAeLt63SCg&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&ved=0CEUQ5wIwCg

That's an interesting point, but from my experience the principal reason for the imposition of visa requirements has always been the attempt to keep immigration problems away from the country imposing the requirement. When I started work at Heathrow at the beginning of 1990, the visa requirement had already been imposed on the countries of the Indian sub-continent about 5 years previously, and longer-serving colleagues were full of tales about the derring-do surrounding those implementations. Countries like Nigeria and Ghana were already subject to the visa requirement, but there were many other African countries which weren't, notably Kenya, and I well recall one of the Forgery CIOs spitting feathers about the reluctance of our lords and masters to do something about the huge numbers of Somalis and others arriving on forged Kenyan passports - inevitably visas were imposed on Kenyans a few years later, much too late. In later years South Africa went the same way because of their failure to control abuse of their documents.

Another milestone was in 1996, when a "common EU visa regime" was imposed, resulting in many nationalities which had formerly not been required to obtain UK visas now having to do so. One such was Kuwait, where I went as ECO in that year.

If the principle criterion was raising revenue, one nationality which would be a candidate for a visa regime would be Brazil, but they have thus far escaped this. Having spent my final years in the service as an enforcement officer, I had better keep my comments to myself as to whether Brazilians ought to have to apply for visas....

Having said all that, there's no doubt that the price of a visa far exceeds the production cost, and this applies to applications in the UK as well. But don't expect a great deal of sympathy from the British public in general, most of whom would probably say that anything which discourages more immigration is a good idea.

I tell people that they're paying for the Great Asylum Scam, but it doesn't seem to make them any happier.

[frankthetank]

Looking thru the list of the new fees, I could not see the fee for a fiance type of visa.

Anyone know what this type of visa is called now and how much?

[7by7]

What is often referred to as a fiance visa is, and always has been, a type of settlement visa.

The new cost of settlement visas will be £810.

[frankthetank]

What is often referred to as a fiance visa is, and always has been, a type of settlement visa.

The new cost of settlement visas will be £810.

Thanks for clarifying that.

So if one has to fork out that £810 fee for a 'fiance visa', at the end of the six months, after you are married, do you then have to pay again for the 2 year extension?

[Eff1n2ret]

What is often referred to as a fiance visa is, and always has been, a type of settlement visa.

The new cost of settlement visas will be £810.

Thanks for clarifying that.

So if one has to fork out that £810 fee for a 'fiance visa', at the end of the six months, after you are married, do you then have to pay again for the 2 year extension?

Yes