paradoxical wrote:I think the main mistake you are making is the assumption that the 'visa administration' should be self sustaining and this is all.
That is the justification that the Home Office is using for the increasingly high fee, the objective being to make it self-sustaining and without relying on tax-payers money (and to that extent I completely agree)
(and yes if the UK wants to attract tourists and students but not charge them a high fee then that is another reason for high ILR fees)
Work through the table of costs from the Home Office and you should be able to conclude that, that is not the reason.
Actually the high cost should be used to make people thing a lot if really worth them to go for ILR. that is what self selection means
This is a flawed argument, and using this argument, there is no limit to what can be charged. At some point if the rules change and an additional requirement is to donate one kidney before getting ILR (since a person can still live with one kidney), your argument will still hold (i.e. people should be made to think a lot if it is really worth getting an ILR) and that just shows that the argument you presented puts no bound on what is reasonable and what is unreasonable.
In order to be eligible for ILR, one has to live for 5 years and pay taxes and earn a decent amount of money (and hence pay decent amount of taxes) or live legally for 10 years (which is a significant time of one's life). If after that, a person picks a form, fills it and pays a "reasonable" fee (which should be ~£500), that still is quite a long process and a person must have thought a lot if it is worth it or not etc. But to charge someone of the order of 5 times more (which can amount to ~10,000 for an average family) is simply brutal. To put the 10,000 in perspective, think of the recent Brexit debate. The politicians were trying to convince people on either side by making arguments like how a family will be ~80 pounds better off/120 pounds worse off etc. THAT is the amount which many politicians deemed to be a decent amount to change someone's opinion. And here, we are talking about charging a family with ~10,000 to get ILR, the amount of money that an average person might save over several years....simply preposterous
very solid argument.
I just wanna point out the main reason why the price of the ILR is going unreasonably high is simply due to the nature of democracy. We, as foreigners, are not holding any voting power, so to speak.
The expense of student/visitor visa will impact the tourism/education business, which inevitably will hit many local business and employees.
while we, ILR applicants, are already residents to the country. Whether we decided to apply for ILR or not won't affect anyone else locally.
The only financially reasonable thing for UKBA to do is raise the price for ILR, which effectively will at least make a good profit, if not reducing the numbers the applicants, which ultimately is their goal, aligning with the proposal to limit the numbers to 100000 before 2020.
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