Britain on Tuesday unveiled new visa rule proposals that include making families pay a hefty cash bond of upto 1,000 pounds to ensure that their foreign visitors leave on time, a move that will affect thousands of immigrants from South Asia.
Proposals for the new rules, considered the biggest shake-up of the immigration system in Britain's history, also include reducing the standard six-month tourist visa to three months.
Releasing consultation papers connected to the proposals, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said visitors to the UK will have to leave within three months.
Byrne, who is visiting India in February, told newsmen the government also planned to create a specific business and specialist visa and a specific visa for one-off events such as Olympics.
Meanwhile, immigration groups said the new proposals would be 'unfair' on poorer families, while the Conservatives dismissed the proposals as a 'headline grabbing gimmick' and repeated their call for an annual limit on immigration. Habib Rahman, chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said the new measures would discriminate against families from countries such as India.
"Only people with fat wallets will be able to bring their families," Rahman told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"If you have for example a big wedding in Leicester you are dealing with 20 people coming and therefore if you have to put up a bond of 1,000 pounds for each, it's a huge amount of money.
"The government is trying to deter people to come for family visits. This is unfair," he said.
The consultation was launched as the Government announced that over one million fingerprints have now been collected from overseas foreign nationals applying to come to the UK as part of its biometrics visas programme.
"Tougher checks abroad mean we keep risky people out. By next spring we'll check everyone's fingerprints when they apply for a visa," the minister said.
"Now we're proposing a financial guarantee as well -- not for everyone, but where we think there's a risk. Our aim is to make the system both more secure, but also to ensure that we maintain the UK's position as a destination of choice for tourists."
Byrne said "in 2006, people from overseas spent 15.4 billion pounds in the UK with the tourism industry employing 1.4 million people."
So far visa applicants in more than 120 countries worldwide are required to provide fingerprints if they want to visit the UK for work, study or for tourism. Biometric checks have identified over 10,000 visa applicants who have previously been fingerprinted in the UK in connection with immigration cases or asylum applications.
Byrne said from the spring of 2008, "the aim is for the biometric programme to be extended to all visa applicants globally."
The visitor consultation proposals build on proposed new penalties on employers of illegal immigrants and a licensing system for any employer or college wishing to recruit from outside the EU. Together these form part of a series of changes the Border and Immigration Agency are introducing over the next 12 months.
