When I leave the house these days, I just feel so much anxiety. Everywhere I turn I can only see how expensive things are getting. Milk has gone up. Bread has gone up. Clothes have gone up. As a single mother, I’m struggling so much to keep up with all the expenses that I have to face. And now, the fees to renew my visa are going up as well. When I found out about that, it really felt like the last straw.
The government announced in July that it is raising the fees charged to migrants like me for visa applications and NHS access – some of them starting from this week – so that it can pay higher wages to doctors and others in the public sector. I definitely think public sector workers deserve a pay rise, but why is it people like me who have to pay for it?
I have lived in the UK for 15 years. I was here during the pandemic – I was working in a supermarket, as I am now, making sure that people could buy their food and survive. I was worried all the time, constantly thinking about how I could protect my 10-year-old son and keep safe. Everyone was clapping for us key workers, but I was just clinging on, hoping for better times to come.
But better times haven’t come yet, and now the Home Office is making things a lot worse for people like me and my son – many of whom have been working and paying tax in this country for many years. Under these plans, the cost of the immigration health surcharge alone will rise from £624 to £1,035 a year for each person. That’s up 417% since this time five years ago, when the charge was £200.
Migrants are required to pay the fee upfront, so for someone moving here now, that could mean a payment of £5,175 for five years in health fees alone. Even before this hike, people like me already pay £2,608 every 30 months to renew an adult visa, which includes the NHS surcharge. It has to be paid, even though I’ve lived here for so long and even though I pay my taxes and national insurance just like everyone else.
Now that the government is raising the fees, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Next year, it will be time for me to renew my visa again. I think it’s going to cost me more than £3,800 this time. Without a visa, I would lose everything. I wouldn’t be able to work any more, rent my home, have a bank account or go to hospital if I needed to. But on a supermarket worker’s salary, where am I supposed to find the money?
I moved to the UK in 2007. To survive, I had to rely on friends and on what my parents back in Bangladesh could send. I ended up in debt just so I could keep paying my fees to the Home Office. Since then, I’ve been making ends meet and playing a part in my local community – I work and pay rent and my son is in school. He really likes to go to school every day and he loves maths – it’s his favourite subject, he’s really good at it. He has plenty of friends and they often play football together. But since I found out that I’m going to have to pay higher fees, I’ve been cutting expenses everywhere I can. I have told my son that from next month he won’t be able to go to his swimming lessons and I already had to stop his tuition in literacy and English – we can’t afford it any more. I just want to give him a better life, but I can’t do it like this.
The government should help people like me make sure that our children are safe, have enough to eat and can live well. It shouldn’t be this hard for us to look after our families. Instead, we are being forced to get into debt to pay for ever-rising visa fees.
I support pay rises for doctors, teachers and the police as much as anyone, but it’s hard to understand why it’s people who are already struggling who are expected to foot the bill and not those who can better afford it. After all, I was treated like a key worker during the pandemic, too. Have they forgotten about us already?
Monira Khatun is a supermarket worker who lives in London. Migrant rights charity Praxis supported Monira to submit her latest visa renewal application
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