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Migrants must pay one-off fee to raise revenue

The home secretary, David Blunkett, plans to impose a £500 surcharge on each of the 900,000 migrants who enter Britain each year to work, study or join family members, the Guardian has learned.

The surcharge is expected to raise £450m a year, a quarter of the £1.8bn annual cost of Britain's immigration and asylum system.

Home Office officials claim it is justified to impose a surcharge on migrants because they will make a "windfall gain through being granted access to the UK labour market".

The £500 is on top of the £155 for work and study permits now being phased in. The surcharge is in the smallprint of Mr Blunkett's immigration and asylum bill, which gets its second reading in the Commons next week.

The Home Office admits that the main motive is "an ongoing need to raise revenue". The pressure on ministers to make their policies self financing will be underlined when the chancellor confirms the tight nature of the public finances in his pre-Budget report on Wednesday.

The disclosure of the charges is expected to provoke protests by MPs and by businesses which rely on migrant workers. The increases will be phased in to dilute their impact.

"Economic migrants benefit in many ways working in the UK, over and above a higher salary expectation, and it is appropriate to pass on some of the costs of these benefits onto migrants through a further one-off charge upon application," says a Home Office background document.

"Similarly there are sound economic and presentational grounds for considering additional charges. It is both fair and economically efficient that government in raising revenue should look to appropriate the windfall gain that migrants derive."

The cost of a work permit is already due to rise from £95 to £125 in April. The surcharge will take the total cost to £625, a fivefold increase. Officials point out that Australia, for example, charges its economic migrants £770 to enter.

Those who come to study in Britain, join family members, or apply to become British citizens will pay £655 instead of the current £155. Those whose applications are refused would be refunded the surcharge.

Asylum seekers will be exempt. But the fees will also be paid by the 18,000 people a year who need to have official "leave to remain" stamps transferred to their passports.

The power to impose the extra charges is in the new legislation, but it fails to specify their likely scale. That is only disclosed in a technical Home Office document, the "regulatory impact assessment", which was published unannounced days after publication of the asylum bill.

The Home Office's technical assessment says that there is a risk that, if the fees are set too high, they will encourage illegal entry, overstaying and working, or that they will deter potential migrants.

Officials admit that higher charges could have a negative impact on securing the people and skills that the economy needs. They are looking at a "differential fee structure" so that those the UK wants to attract to work in Britain would be charged less. They are also considering easing the restrictions on employers who recruit from abroad, in return for the higher charges.

The need for revenue-raising in Mr Blunkett's "tough 'n' tender" asylum and immigration package follows the Treasury's insistence that it will not use taxpayers' money to fund a compulsory identity card scheme, and the row over tuition fees to fund expansion of higher education.

(Source: Guardian, 7/12/2003)

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...cut the bullshit please...

Guess I'm quite lucky as I've managed to avoid the worst of the fees (ancestry was about £50, ILR was free, naturalisation was £150). Not sure I would have paid £500 for nationality. I was hesitant just to pay £150!

Many thanks.

Well, I guess this bit of news puts and end to my worries, if you know what I mean.

Here is the bad news in the draft Bill for all to see:

quote:

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Fees
20 Fees
(1) In prescribing a fee for an application or process under a provision specified in
subsection (2) the Secretary of State may, with the consent of the Treasury,
prescribe an amount which is intended to—
(a) exceed the administrative costs of determining the application or
undertaking the process, and
(b) reflect benefits that the Secretary of State thinks are likely to accrue to
the person who makes the application, to whom the application relates
or by or for whom the process is undertaken, if the application is
successful or the process is completed.
(2) Those provisions are—
(a) section 41(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981 (c. 61) (fees for
applications, &c. under that Act),
(b) section 5(1)(a) and (b) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (fees for
application for leave to remain, &c.), and
(c) section 122 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (c. 41)
(fees for work permit, &c.).
(3) An Order in Council under section 1 of the Consular Fees Act 1980 (c. 23) (fees)
which prescribes a fee in relation to an application for the issue of a certificate
under section 10 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (right
of abode: certificate of entitlement) may prescribe an amount which is intended
to—
(a) exceed the administrative costs of determining the application, and
(b) reflect benefits that in the opinion of Her Majesty in Council are likely
to accrue to the applicant if the application is successful.
(4) Where an instrument prescribes a fee in reliance on this section it may include
provision for the refund, where an application is unsuccessful or a process is
not completed, of that part of the fee which is intended to reflect the matters
specified in subsection (1)(b) or (3)(b).
(5) Provision included by virtue of subsection (4)—
(a) may determine, or provide for the determination of, the amount to be
refunded;
(b) may confer a discretion on the Secretary of State or another person
(whether in relation to determining the amount of a refund or in
relation to determining whether a refund should be made).

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It seems to me that the answer to anonymous's question is clear: They can charge extra fees on each and all steps of the process:

1. Work permits and HSMP
2. Leave to remain and ILR
3. Nationality
4. Right of Abode

This Act doesn't mean they will charge the fees. But it gives them the power to do so on short notice, with only consultation with the Treasury. It stands to reason that they will go relatively light on certain programs like HSMP where they are trying to encourage migrants, but you never know.

The only consolation is that the extra fee might be refunded if the application is unsuccessful.

Joseph

As any other country, it is not perfect, cannot be everything for everyone, and may not necessarily fit someone's particular lifestyle, preferences or expectations. I guess, as always, it helps to have choices...

[ December 12, 2003: Message edited by: Cosmopol ]