In what seems to be a a fallout of the UK home secretary’s remarks on Indians ‘overstaying’ in Britain,the Indian High Commission in the UK has begun enforcing a rule that requires British citizens attend visa centres in-person.
The wait time for tourist (British Citizens) has increase and as a result tourist are forced to cancell their holiday plans.The High Commission said the in-person visa application rule was aimed at preventing travel agents from illegally charging fees to get visas processed for travellers to India and dismissed claims that the visa rule change was sudden, reiterating that individual visa applicants have always been expected to apply in-person at the mission’s outsourced VFS Global centres in London.
Visa agents in the UK are no longer permitted to apply for tourist visas on behalf of applicants.
“First and foremost, we understand that there has been difficulty in getting these appointments, we are doing our best to ameliorate the situation,” Vikram Doraiswami said in his video message from India House in London. He assured that more visa slots would soon be released online and efforts are being made to ramp up capacity in partnership VFS.
There has been some tension in ties between Britain and India after Home Secretary Suella Braverman remarked that Indians overstay in the UK.
“I have concerns about having an open borders migration policy with India because I don’t think that’s what people voted for with Brexit,” Braverman had told the Spectator earlier in the month. “Look at migration in this country, the largest group of people who overstay are Indian migrants.”
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each country should respect the other when it comes to immigration rules. However it will be hypocritical to deny that many of our visitors flaunt the rules either by illegally working or overstaying. As to the travel agents, the action is spot on because just like back home they try to provide dodgy service at high price