An email enquiry sent sent to the UK Visas and Immigration offices will attract a charge of £5.48 from today. The UK Home Office contracted all customer inquiries to a commercial partner-Sitel UK, a renowned provider of outsourced customer care solutions.
Sitel will collect the email charge through a debit or credit card, or if these are not available, via a third party “such as an agent or sponsor”. It will also cut the number of languages used in the process from 20 to just eight.
According to the Home Office 80 per cent of calls and emails are made in English and only four per cent are in the languages which will be withdrawn. A source said the new contract would help to make the visa service “cost-neutral” for the taxpayer.
Visa charges already range from £89 for a six-month visitor visa to £3,250 to settle a dependent relative.
In a related issue, the United States government has formulated new rules which will require visa applicants worldwide to provide history of social media handles for the past five years and biographical information going back 15 years.
The new measures are a part of renewed efforts by the Trump administration to tighten vetting of prospective US visa applicants. The new questions were approved by the United States on May 23 by the Office of Management and Budget.
Under the new rules, consular officials will have the authority to request all previous passport numbers, five years worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.
A US State Department official informed media that officials would request the additional information “when they feel that such information is necessary to confirm a person’s identity or conduct more rigorous security vetting”. The US State Department had earlier informed media that this sort of tighter vetting would be applicable to those visa applicants “who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities”.
The Trump administration introduced all these measures to strengthen US national security in the light of the clear and present danger posed by the Islamist terrorists.
