Higher Cost for Nigerian Travelers as UK Announces Hike in Visa Fees, Health Surcharge
- The UK has announced it is increasing visa fees and health charges for immigrants from Nigeria and other countries
- Prime minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, said this is necessary as the government approved a hike in the pay of teachers, police, and others
- The decision raised concern amongst Nigerians as it implies a higher cost of travel
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Nigerians and other citizens looking to migrate to the United Kingdom will now pay more for visa application fees and immigration health surcharges (IHS).
Rishi Sunak, the UK Prime Minister, made this known during a Downing Street press conference on Thursday, July 13, 2023.
Source: UGC
The announcement is coming a few weeks after the United States embassy said it is increasing fees for processing non-immigrant visa (NIV) applications.
The US embassy, according to a statement on its website, said the new fees for various visa categories will be implemented from June 17, 2023.
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Nigeria, as a country with one of the highest numbers of immigrants to the UK, maybe the most affected by the new development.
Though there are no details of the number of increases to the immigration health surcharge yet, a hike of 15% is proposed for work and visit visas, while 20% is suggested for study visas, Certificates of Sponsorship, Settlement, Citizenship, Leave to Remain and wider categories.
In addition, equalising costs for students and in-country and out-of-country priority service fees will be charged accordingly.
Why UK is increasing charges
The development also followed a hike - between 5% and 7% – in the pay for teachers, police, junior doctors and other public sector workers.
The British-Indian leader Sunak said prioritising paying public workers comes with the need to pull the money from somewhere.
According to him, exploring the option of borrowing more or increasing taxes would not be responsible at this time.
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.
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.
Sunak believes this is the right step as the fees have not been increased for a while, even though costs have risen since the last hike.
He noted that the move would not cause inflation to increase any further as there would be no new borrowing or spending to fund the increases.
Nigerians form long queues at Lagos UK visa office after Legit story
After Legit.ng published a story stating that the United Kingdom has resumed Priority Visa issuance to Nigerians, the UK visa office is overflowing with Nigerians seeking to obtain visas.
Nigerians began to throng the UK visa office after it was announced that Nigeria had been removed from the UK red list following the drop in the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Legit.ng had reported that the UK government announced the resumption of its Priority Visa (PV) in all the Nigerian visa application centres from January 24, 2022.
The news comes after the US Mission in Nigeria stated those who have previously been to the United States have been captured by Drop Box service, which lets them renew their visa without attending an interview.
Source: Legit.ng
