Will UK Tourist Visas Be Cut to 3 months?
The Immigration and Borders Agency of the United Kingdom has proposed to cut the validity of UK tourist visas from 6 months to 3 months. They have published a consultation paper that will cut the period of stay by 50 percent. On the other hand, they have also proposed a related condition that the families must place a visa bond of £1,000 to ensure that they leave when the visas expire.
Aside from reducing the validity of tourist visas, the Immigration and Borders Agency of the UK is also looking at providing special occasion visas available in the following years. The visas are intended to cater to special occasions such as that of the London Olympics in the year 2012.
Aside from those two proposals, the Immigration and Borders Agency is also looking at ceasing the visit visas for business travellers and creating a new classification solely for that purpose, thus prohibiting business executives from using the easy to obtain visitor’s visas. Instead they should be applying for the more expensive and difficult visas. In 2007, there were about 1.7 million people who entered the UK to conduct business under a visit visa. That number is about 23% of the people who entered with a tourist visa.
The above proposals are among the recent policy changes that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government is preparing for the upcoming Tier system or points-based system of immigration. The five-tier system will be implemented one tier at a time and will start with the implementation of Tier 1 in March 2008.