LONDON: The UK has been urged to scrap a 10-year visa route and cap all routes to settlement in the country at five years.
The long and expensive visa route for immigrants has been labeled “racist” after analysis showed most applicants who feel forced to go through it are people of color, according to a report in The Guardian.
The 10-year route to a visa is used by hundreds of thousands of people who are not eligible for other immigration schemes because of a lack of income or professional qualifications. Many work in low-paid jobs, such as cleaning or care work. Other common routes to settlement in the UK take five years.
According to freedom of information data obtained by the charity Ramfel, there are 218,110 people on the 10-year route.
Analysis of Home Office data showed that all but one country in the top 10 nationalities who felt forced to use the route were those with predominantly non-white populations. The top five were Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Ghana and Bangladesh. Overall, 86 percent of people using the route were from Asian or African countries, while 6 percent were from Europe.
People seeking to gain a visa via the 10-year route must renew their leave to remain with the Home Office every 30 months, meaning four renewals. The fee for each renewal is £3,850 ($5,095). The Home Office can grant a fee waiver but many requests are refused.
According to a 2023 report on the 10-year route by the legal advice and support service Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, the think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research and the charity Praxis, the most common way of covering the fees was to borrow money, with many people remaining in debt afterward and struggling to pay for basic living costs.
A GMIAU spokesperson said: “These numbers confirm what people on the 10-year route already know: It is a racist policy. People are being driven into debt, forced to choose between paying thousands of pounds in visa fees to keep their legal status and keeping their families fed and warm.
“Ten years is far too long for anyone to wait to settle. The route must be scrapped. A good place to start would be to cap all routes to settlement at five years.”
Nick Beales, of Ramfel, said: “The 10-year route is an enduring legacy of the hostile environment. Like many other Conservative policies from this period, the racist intent is clear, with African and South Asian nationals far more likely to be placed on this arduous and often brutal route toward securing permanent immigration status.”
