The United Kingdom’s visa and immigration charges are notoriously excessive. A family of 4, from Nigeria, applying to join their family member in the UK, must make a budget of not less than 40 MILLION NAIRA, (£20,000), to pay for visa fee and health charge. And this does not include other fees such as tuberculosis test fees,, Visa Application Center/ biometric fees, English language test fees, ( where applicable), priority fee,( optional), and immigration adviser charges . Except for the health charge fees, most of these payments are not refundable and the applicant is expected to pay again in the event of a reapplication following a refusal.
Thankfully, there is a window for applicants who genuinely cannot afford the visa fee and immigration health charge and who are making a human rights – based application to apply for fee waiver.
If you are applying to join your family member, and you are able to demonstrate that you can’t afford the required fees and that to require you to make such payments would be a violation of your right to family life, then you are entitled to be excused from making the payments.
A fee waiver MUST be granted where the applicant and sponsor are assessed and found that they cannot afford the fees. You must provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that you cannot afford the fee and once you pass this affordability test, the Home Office is mandated to grant you a fee waiver. The obligation to grant a fee waiver becomes even stronger where children are involved because of statutory and case – law mandates.
It is important to emphasize that not all applicants are eligible for a fee waiver but only meant for those making specified human rights applications, such as joining family members. Thus, fee waiver is not available for categories such as students, skilled workers, and visitors.
An eligible applicant must show that they do not have sufficient funds at their disposal to pay the required fee after meeting their essential living needs, such as housing and food. The assessor will consider what is left of the applicant’s income after accommodation and essential living needs are met. This will be applied to the total amount that the applicant is expected to pay for the application.
It is important to emphasize that there is no risk in making a fee waiver application as it does not have anything to do with the success or failure of the main application.
Like every other application, the outcome of a fee waiver application is heavily dependent on the quality of the application and its meeting with requirements, based on facts and evidence.
Our office is available to assist with the making of a fee waiver application and in any other immigration application that you may be in need of.
Eddie Onyeka.