Another bad news for Immigrants

Summary:
In the future, all temporary migrants (student, workers and newly arriving family members or dependent) who do not have indefinite leave to remain will contribute to the cost of their healthcare through a new migrant health levy, linked to their visa. This will be set at a fair level reflecting their contribution and value. The Home Office are currently consulting on this.


https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... cument.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23156403

It's highly unlikely to affect anyone in Tier 1 General as they are in the country already and by the time the consultation is over, the category has been closed for overseas applications for 5 years and the majority should have ILR already or have left the country.

In the proposal it says that they will look at extending the scheme to those already in the country in time. Certainly it will apply to us, as we are not eligible for ILR for another 3 years.The consultation ends on the 28th of August this year.

We already contribute for this as we are paying the NI.
I think this change is mainly for the those who are here and the use the system without having contributed for it (health tourists they are called).

No it is not. If you read the document they intend to extend this levy to existing migrants, in time.

mr_mar wrote:We already contribute for this as we are paying the NI.
I think this change is mainly for the those who are here and the use the system without having contributed for it (health tourists they are called).

NIis nothing to do with NHS

Can any body please explain 3.20 from thisdocument

Seems like it is OK for current holders of Tier 1 - as long as we don't need another extension

5.37. The changes to the charging system
may mean that a temporary migrant
who was ordinarily resident and so Sustaining services, ensuring fairness
entitled to free NHS treatment under
the old system, should now have to
pay (because they do not have ILR
and have not paid the health levy).
Fairness suggests that they should
not have to start to paying, at least
while their current visa remains valid.
5.38. Current health registration records do
not contain data that would enable us
to filter out those individuals who in
future may need to be charged and/or
registered differently. We would
therefore need to review primary care
registration for the whole population.
This would be an enormous
administrative burden as well as a
huge imposition on a large number of
UK residents.
5.39. The current proposal is therefore not
to extend charges to people who hold
visas before the new charging regime
comes into force for the duration of
that visa

[quote="tahirnaveed"]Can any body please explain 3.20 from [url=https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... cument.pdf]this [/url]document[/quote]

3.20. The following visa categories of
temporary migrant, and their
dependants, where allowed, would be
covered:
- Tier 1 – highly skilled workers and
entrepreneurs
- Tier 2 – skilled workers
- Tier 3 – students
- Tier 4 – temporary workers eg
entertainers & musicians
- Family migrants.
3.21. All of these groups are currently
quickly entitled to free NHS services.
They acquire this both through being
ordinarily resident and sometimes
through specific exemptions that are
set out in the Charging Regulations.


Given that this section is titled "What happens now" I take it to mean that in the current system people on those visas are considered ordinarily resident (or have exemptions) and are thus eligible for NHS care today.

alxale wrote:Seems like it is OK for current holders of Tier 1 - as long as we don't need another extension

5.37. The changes to the charging system
may mean that a temporary migrant
who was ordinarily resident and so Sustaining services, ensuring fairness
entitled to free NHS treatment under
the old system, should now have to
pay (because they do not have ILR
and have not paid the health levy).
Fairness suggests that they should
not have to start to paying, at least
while their current visa remains valid.
5.38. Current health registration records do
not contain data that would enable us
to filter out those individuals who in
future may need to be charged and/or
registered differently. We would
therefore need to review primary care
registration for the whole population.
This would be an enormous
administrative burden as well as a
huge imposition on a large number of
UK residents.
5.39. The current proposal is therefore not
to extend charges to people who hold
visas before the new charging regime
comes into force for the duration of
that visa

Thanks

so does that mean that we wont be paying NI any more??

hsyasin wrote:so does that mean that we wont be paying NI any more??

Its not correct. See one of the post above from tahirnaveed.

tahirnaveed wrote:

mr_mar wrote:We already contribute for this as we are paying the NI.
I think this change is mainly for the those who are here and the use the system without having contributed for it (health tourists they are called).

NIis nothing to do with NHS

Well, it has got to be funded by taxes in one way or another, don't you think? Or do you think everythingn is just done for free there? In fact, some of its funding indeed comes from NI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ ... d)#Funding

Yes, it sounds like it will be applied when next we apply for an extension. Or perhaps if one doesn't yet have an NHS number, at that point.

The consultation principle seems flawed. It doesn't consider the tax + NI contributions of the migrants at all. Especially for Tier 1 General Highly skilled category, most the migrants would be paying more tax + NI than UK average.

Also the fact the visa extension charges (for Tier 1) are already very disproportionate to the costs incurred by UKBA, so there is already a hidden levy applied.

Add to that, we are not entitled to any public funds(eg.child benefits).

And the consultation keeps on talking about fairness several times. Don't understand how all of this is fair?

layman wrote:The consultation principle seems flawed. It doesn't consider the tax + NI contributions of the migrants at all. Especially for Tier 1 General Highly skilled category, most the migrants would be paying more tax + NI than UK average.

Also the fact the visa extension charges (for Tier 1) are already very disproportionate to the costs incurred by UKBA, so there is already a hidden levy applied.

Add to that, we are not entitled to any public funds(eg.child benefits).

And the consultation keeps on talking about fairness several times. Don't understand how all of this is fair?

Absolutely to the point.
there's already group of us planning to go for legal battle for Visa extn fee increase, i guess this can be taken into consideration as well.

I request people to check sticky post: http://www.immigrationboards.com/viewto ... &start=140 if not done yet,
And join the group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/UKITF/

Since this is still in the consultation stage, we cannot proceed against this issue yet.

However we can (and should) all respond to the consultation which is available online, and reject this backdoor attempt to make immigrant taxpayers a 2nd-rate population.

The online consultation can be accessed at http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitec ... ealthcare/

This consultation is a small survey, will take hardly 10 minutes, but the impact on each of us will be huge.