The Home Office has been accused of ‘milking the immigration system for cash’ after increasing visa fees this week
A young couple say they can no longer afford to buy a home after paying up to £10,000 to be able to live together in the UK, as thousands of other families face increased visa fees from this week.
British citizen Hannah Helbert, 31, is married to Cuban-born Danny, and Home Office regulations mean they have had to spend thousands bringing Danny to the UK.
Ms Helbert estimates the pair have spent between £7,000 and £10,000 on visa fees, an NHS surcharge and solicitors fees during their four-year relationship, and still face further charges.
Danny arrived in the UK last year and began working and paying national insurance just six weeks later.
“Our savings have been obliterated,” Ms Helbert said.
“We’re not on bad wages, but we just can’t afford a mortgage after all of this. We had budgeted for £5,000 on the fees but constant increases have pushed us well over that.
“The partner visa has to be renewed every two and a half years and we’ll also have to pay for indefinite leave to remain and eventually citizenship.”
New visa fees hit families across the UK
The costs facing Ms Helbert’s family have all been increased this week, with updated fees coming in to force on Wednesday.
But government transparency data reveals that despite rising charges for families, the costs to the Home Office of processing the visas are considerably lower, and charities have questioned the fairness of the department appearing to profit from legal applications to come to the UK.
“I appreciate that people have to pay their way, but I don’t think people understand just how much this costs in the long term. As soon as Danny got here he was paying national insurance,” Ms Helbert said.
“We haven’t had any explanation as to why what they’re charging us is a lot higher than how much the process costs them. It feels like we’re just having money made out of us.”
Visa fees soar but Home Office pays just a fraction
The price of the settlement visa used by foreign spouses has risen from £1,846 to £1,938.
But the cost to the department of processing the visa – listed as an “estimated unit cost” – is a fraction of the price at £482, government transparency data shows, giving a profit of £1,456.
An indefinite leave to remain application now costs £3,029 – up from £2,885 last year.
The cost to the Home Office currently stands at £523 – a profit of £2,506.
This is the same even for domestic abuse victims or family members of the UK’s Armed Forces, the Home Office has confirmed.
British citizenship applications have also gone up by £105 to £1,605, despite costing the Home Office just £575 to process.
Student visas have also increased from £490 to £524, while the cost to the Home Office is £266.
The Home Office said that “these measures ensure we can maintain an effective migration and borders system, with those who benefit most from its use contributing towards its cost and reducing the reliance on UK taxpayers”.
‘I’m incurring debt to meet the new visa charges’
Caroline Coombs, co-founder of Reunite Families which supports families separated by Home Office visa rules, said her own family rushed through their applications to beat the charge and avoid an additional £144 – but had to use credit cards because they didn’t have the funds in time.
“We’re all feeling the huge impacts of a cost of living crisis and this has put us in more debt and further and further away from being able to buy our own home,” she said.
Ms Coombs estimated that she has spent £15,000 over a seven-year process to bring her Ecuadorian partner to the UK, in part because she had to appeal an initial refusal.
“It’s just so unbelievably expensive – I can’t bear to think about how much we’ve spent so far in visa fees, legal fees and associated costs for the process.”
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said that the latest fee rises would “force countless migrant families in to an impossible choice: poverty or separation from the people they love.”
“At a time when millions are already struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, this Government is shamelessly milking the immigration system for cash, at the expense of basic rights,” said executive director, Yasmin Halima.
“We see people every day who have drained their life savings just trying to stay together – and with legal aid in such a sorry state, there is almost nowhere left to turn.”
Cost of bringing families to the UK rises – again
The total cost of bringing a partner to the UK on a ten-year path to settlement has reached £20,000, according to analysis from a charity supporting separated families.
For those also bringing a child, the same route to settlement costs nearly £37,000.
For those on a five year path to settlement, bringing a partner costs nearly £12,000, and adding a child takes it to more than £22,000.
This is because a family must pay for an initial visa application, which must be extended every two and a half years.
After five years the partner and/or child is typically eligible for indefinite leave to remain, which is another cost of more than £3,000.
They must also pay an immigration health surcharge of £1,035 for adults and £776 for children per year, until they are granted indefinite leave to remain.
This ends up being slightly higher overall, because at the moment of applying people are issued with a visa that is two years and nine months, so they are charged a surcharge rounded to three years.
Before getting indefinite leave to remain, joining family members also have no recourse to public funds, so they cannot receive any benefits.
This is not including British citizenship applications, which some families may choose to make at an extra cost.
Migrants not a ‘magic money tree’
Nazek Ramadan, director of Migrant Voice, accused the Government of treating migrants as a “never-ending magic money tree”.
“The UK already has some of the highest fees in the world. These costs push migrants in to poverty, leave them struggling to afford bills, or even food, and can have huge impacts on the lives of children,” he said.
“With these further increases this Government is treating migrants as a never-ending magic money tree, with no thought as to the damage they will cause to people’s lives.”
He added: “At a time of such economic instability, with prices rising across the board, these increases feel like a penalty on people coming to live and work in the UK, people who not only already pay taxes, but also many cannot access any form of state support when things get tough.”
UK visa applications fall
The number of migrants applying for key visa routes to the UK has dropped by more than a third in a year, data shows.
Applications covering a total of 772,200 people were submitted across the main visa categories in the year to March 2025, down 37 per cent from nearly 1.24 million in the previous 12 months.
The decline is likely to reflect changes in legal migration rules introduced early in 2024 by the previous Conservative government, including a ban on overseas care workers and students bringing family dependants, and a steep rise in the salary threshold for skilled workers to £38,700.
The figures have been published by the Home Office and cover the main worker, study and family visa categories.
The drop has been driven by a sharp fall in applications by foreign health and care workers and their family members, which decreased by 78 per cent from 359,300 in 2023-24 to 80,700 in 2024-25.