Asians & Africans to pay a £3k fee to enter UK Nov 2013

[Babz]

FOREIGNERS from “high risk” countries will have to pay a £3,000 fee to enter Britain under a tough new crackdown on immigration abuse.
A pilot scheme to be rolled out by Home Secretary Theresa May in November will charge visitors from six African and Asian countries to come into the country.
The Australian-style tactics mean foreigners would lose the £3,000 cash bond if they overstay their visas.
The first scheme will cover India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Ghana.
Visitors from those countries will have to pay the bond as security against living here illegally.
Ms May said: “This is the next step in making sure our immigration system is more selective, bringing down net migration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands, while still welcoming the brightest and the best to Britain.”
She added: “In the long run we’re interested in a system of bonds that deters overstaying and recovers costs if a foreign national has used our public services.”
The Home Office is targeting countries which have high volumes of visitor visa applications and what it deems to be relatively high levels of fraud and abuse.


Culled from: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... abuse.html

[Ricardo]

Is this how to repay your former colonies? Rubbish, why will someone pay £3,000 to visit a country on it's knees? This is nothing more than a calculated political move by Ms May.

[Babz]

Visitors from India and other 'high risk' countries in Asia and Africa will be forced to pay £3,000 cash bond before they enter UK:
Plans by Home Secretary mean visitors lose their cash if they overstay visa

India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to be targeted

Pilot scheme will later be extended to cover work permits and student visas


Visitors from 'high risk' countries in Africa and Asia will have to put up a £3,000 cash bond to enter Britain.
The money will be kept by the Government if visitors do not return home by the time their visas expire.
A pilot scheme, introduced by Home Secretary Theresa May, will target hundreds of people coming to Britain on six-month visit visas from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
The countries have been picked for their high number of visa applications and what the Government sees as relatively high levels of immigration abuse and fraud, reports the Sunday Times.
The bonds, to be introduced from November, will only apply to non-EU migrants, otherwise they would fall foul of European rights to free movement.
'This is the next step in making sure our immigration system is more selective, bringing down net migration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands while still welcoming the brightest and the best to Britain,' Mrs May told the Sunday Times.
'In the long run we’re interested in a system of bonds that deters overstaying and recovers costs if a foreign national has used our public services.'
A second scheme will cover countries such as Kenya, the newspaper reports, which are considered to be lower-risk because immigration officials have fewer doubts about migrants' plans to return home.
About 2.2million people are granted visas to enter Britain every year. Last year 296,000 people from India were granted six-month visas, as were 101,000 from Nigeria, 53,000 from Pakistan and 14,000 apiece from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Mrs May's plans, revealed by the Daily Mail in March, will be expanded to cover thousands of visa applicants and extended to work and student permits as well as tourists.
The Home Secretary plans to reduce annual net migration to under 100,000 by 2015.
Official figures earlier this year showed that the Government’s squeeze on entrants from outside the EU had pushed immigration into Britain to its lowest level in nearly a decade.


The number coming to live in Britain fell by 74,000 in the 12 months to June last year as curbs on students and workers from outside Europe began to bite.
‘We have reviewed all migration routes to the UK and have put in place measures to reduce immigration,’ said a source close to the Home Secretary when the plans were unveiled.
‘The latest statistics are encouraging and show that net migration continues to fall. But our work is not complete.’
The bonds could face criticism for not targeting the 'white Commonwealth', the Sunday Times suggested, while Canada rejected a similar scheme on grounds of discrimination against immigrants.
Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, has previously warned that such bonds will ‘antagonise settled communities in Britain and enrage our allies such as India’.


Culled from:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... er-UK.html

[vinny]

Not a good way of 'welcoming the brightest and the best to Britain'.

[verbina]

Unbe-bloody-lievable?!!!

[ouflak1]

Well it's not a bad idea I suppose on 'paper'. But once you get out of the political committee meeting and into the real world, I think even the most ardent supporters of this scheme would have to see major, perhaps unforgivable, issues with it. First, and most obviously, it creates animosity. Second, £3,000 is hardly the cost to the UK for an illegal immigrant, and probably not even within an order of magnitude of the true cost. If they are going to do something like this, you might as well get the numbers right. Third, I'm not convinced this really strikes at the heart of the very simple and blatant problem, that there are frankly too many people in the UK, far too many for such a small landmass to support without being mortally dependent on imports.

If the UK is truly serious about reducing immigration, both legal and illegal, then I think quotas on visitor visas may be the only way to get the job done in an acceptable fashion. And it should be across the board for all visa nationals, not piecewise and targeted. They might also have to ditch Tier 1 General altogether, no more extensions, no more dependent visas, nothing. Lose Tier 1 Entrepreneur or raise the minimum to something like £500,000 available with £500,000 already invested, not just people flashing a ludicrously trivial £52,000 in a bank account. Cut dependent visas for all Tier 2. Likewise no dependents for student visas, except PHd candidates. Maybe increase the budget and resources to catch those trying to enter on trucks coming across the channel.

None is this palatable. Had such rules been in effect when I began my UK journey, I would almost certainly be in my own home country now. But atleast it would be more fair. Everybody, from every nationality would be affected to some extent. I think the UK would rather deal with the repercussions of that, than targeting these specific countries in such a egregious manner.

I doubt this will happen.

[thebionicredneck2003]

While I can understand trying to do what is necessary to reduce overstayers and net migration, this scheme seems to be somewhat discriminatory, as it focuses primarily on asians and africans. If they would like to implement such a scheme, then it should be a blanket scheme and not specifically targeting a specific demographic.

In addition, a £3,000 bond for a visitor coming for a graduation ceremony or a wedding ceremony is absolutely ridiculous. I think it is fine and dandy to come up with initiatives to appease the people and make them feel that they are trying to control migration, but I am really interested in how this would be implemented without it being seen as discriminatory

[Babz]

No need for long stories. I suggest the so called 'High Risk' countries introduce a fee of £10,000 for any British national both wishing to visit their countries and to those already visiting/living their.
An eye for an eye

[Obie]

Interesting that this scheme is aimed at African and Asian nations.

[Babz]

The UK NEW IMMIGRATION POLICY is simply "NO COLORED ALLOWED" disguised to keep the '3rd world out' The real immigrants "FLOODING" the UK are from former Eastern Europe now EU Nationals. Well they are light skinned so not classified as 'HIGH RISK' and they do BLEND easily right? right! But the 'DARKIES'? easy to spot by the BNP and bad business for government during election. £3000 deposit for first time 'High Risk' visitors. Please how much is 3K pounds in your local currency?

[ouflak1]

The UK NEW IMMIGRATION POLICY is simply "NO COLORED ALLOWED" ... rant

Yeah maybe.... But keep in mind that the BNP is just as opposed to Polish/Romanian/Bulgarian immigration as they are to any other. They even got 100,000 people to sign an online petition that was sent to parliament opposing the relaxation of restrictions on immigrations from these countries. There has never been any such petition against HSMP/Tier1 which allowed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Pakistani and Indian people immigration into the country.

I can see your point and I do believe this policy will inspire just this kind of ire with the countries targeted and immigrates in this country already.

But there is still the basic question and obvious problem isn't there? There are too many people in this country, especially from immigration. So how do you stop this or atleast curtail it to such an extent that you have firm control over just exactly who gets in?

Right now, the current policies fail to do that. Legally there are still tens of thousands of 'dependents' pouring into the country every year, some in categories where such a visa is entirely nonsensical. There exists an 'Entrepreneur' visa which is a sham (or invites one to take place). And they are about to open up the UK to Romanian and Bulgarian citizens. Illegally there are hundreds of thousands of people who come in as visitors, if they even go through that much trouble and don't just sneak in on the back of a truck, from countries all over the world, who vanish into the background ether of the UK, only to reappear many years later trying to apply for a discretionary leave visa on the basis of 'human rights' because they now have children here.

It is so much of a problem that many citizens have to ask themselves if the UK is still a sovereign nation in control of its own destiny. What would they (we!) do if there were an international emergency and imports were suddenly cutoff for some significant period of time? How do they handle an aging population heading into retirement that in just a few decades does not seem have a working tax base to support it? What is the 'identity' of the UK and what do they want it to be in the future?

None of those questions have easy answers. Cutting back on immigration atleast mitigates some of those issues for some short period of time. This particular policy targeting 'colored' nations is likely just the beginning, IF the UK government is going to get serious about these population issues.

The problem with this is the way they are introducing it. If they grouped this in with a sweeping change of reforms such as the ones I suggested in my previous post above, then there would be no question to all of us in the UK, and to the rest of the world, what their future intentions are: To drastically and necessarily reduce and control all immigration into the UK. Having this specific policy stand on its own is inviting exactly the kind of criticism it deserves, and is the reason why I think this policy will probably not happen.