The United Kingdom (UK) has announced an increase in visa applications and health surcharge fee paid by Immigrants.
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who announced the development during a ring Downing Street press conference, said that it will help fund public-sector pay increases.
Recall that public sector workers in the UK, including teachers and health workers, have recently embarked on strikes demanding a pay increase across the country.
According to the prime minister, if the government is going to prioritise paying public sector workers more, the money has to come from somewhere else because he is not prepared to increase taxes, adding that borrowing won’t be an option because it will make inflation worse.
He said “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.
“This is not good news to visa applicants, please prepare for it. Especially those with family. It will cost a lot more, if you are here already, start working on building your credit from day one, see if you could have access to some finance by the time.
“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.”