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UK will hike visa fees for Indians
Published on Wed, Mar 07, 2007 at 23:33, Updated on Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 10:01 in 
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UK CALLING: As many as 19,553 students from India came to the UK last year.
New Delhi: The US may be aiming to hike H1B visas to let smart people from India and elsewhere come to solve America's problems, but UK is looking the other way round.
A steep increase in UK’s visa fees for students, visitors and those wishing to settle down in London from India from April 2007 was announced on Wednesday.
The basic visitor visa fee has been increased from ₤50 (Rs 4,250 approx) to ₤63, student visa from ₤85 to ₤99, Long Term Visa (including Work Permit and Highly Skilled Migrant Programme Visa) from ₤85 to ₤200 and settlement Visa from ₤260 to ₤500.
News agency PTI quoted Glyn Williams, Director, Business Development, UK-visas and Simon Lovett, Programme Manager for Customer and Communications as saying the visa fees have been increased to cover the increasing maintenance cost and to provide better service to the visa aspirants.
The transit visa fee would increase from ₤30 to ₤44 from April 1.
Williams said the demand has been increasing constantly.
As many as 19,553 students from India came to the UK last year - a 24 per cent increase over the previous year.
Overall 3,66,170 visitors from India visited the UK in 2006 as against 144,931 visitors from China.
Williams also explained the Visitor Visa fee increase and said so far the applicant in India for a visitor visa had to pay ₤5.51 separately to the VFS, the agency to whom the work has been outsourced.
He added that the new fee of ₤63 would include the VFS handling fee also.
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Why hike fees for Indian only? I think UK Government has not learnt any lessons from the "Big Brother" episode
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This hike is visa fees is ridiculous. Visa fees are meant to cover the costs, and not to make profit.
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