An updated list of immigration and citizenship application fees that will apply starting April 6, 2021, shows that they are all unchanged from last year.
The immigration medical fee, a separate immigration tax, rose sharply over that period. In 2018, the medical fee was £200 a year. A spouse applying for permission to stay in the U.K. would pay £1,033 in permit fees for two-and-a-half years, plus £500 in medical fees. The medical surcharge doubled in early 2019, and increased even more to £624 per year in October 2020. So even with the basic fee unchanged, the total cost of a spouse’s application jumped from £1,533 to £2,593 – a 69% increase – in just a few years.
The money from the health immigration fee goes to the NHS, but the Home Office still makes a huge profit from application processing fees. A migrant applying for indefinite leave to remain in the UK must pay £2,389. The cost of processing an ILR application for the Home Office is £243 – so the fee is set ten times higher than the actual administrative costs. The skilled worker visa for those working in a “scarce profession” where Britain desperately needs workers has an administrative cost of £127, but the fee is as high as £928.
The fee for registering a child as British is most outrageous. In 2021/22 the fee is still over £1,000, but the actual cost is £372. Earlier this year, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Home Office failed to assess the best interests of children in setting this fee, although it remains in effect for now.
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It’s not just individual migrants who fall victim to extortion. Employers who hire foreign workers are faced with having to pay £1,000 per worker per year. (For small businesses and universities there is a lower levy of £364 per worker per year, and there are some exceptions.) This fee applies only to new workers, not to those already employed, but thanks to Brexit it now also applies to new arrivals from the EU.
