Just for a change, LC decides to oppose a tax.

Since when did paying a tax have anything to do with whether one received the services it paid for?

You can spend your whole life paying for the fire service without ever once having your house burn down.

Or pay for the NHS without ever visiting a hospital.

Personally, I think the government should charge Americans around £1,000 each for a Visa because of the increased risk of terrorism caused by their presence on British soil.

On the other hand, by paying for the Fire Service and NHS, I know its there if I’ve ever need it, so the tax we pay to cover the costs of those public services can be considered a form of insurance.

As an English-speaking migrant, not only it is unlikely that you will ever need any of the services that the surcharge is supposedly going to pay for, but a large proportion of that surcharge will inevitably go towards covering costs arising from inward migration from the EU and, especially, the A8 accession states.

If the immigrants themselves don’t get charged for these services they will come out of general taxation revenue presumably. Which means that the bulk of the English speaking population will pay for a service (language teaching of their own native tongue) that they will never use.

I don’t see how you can oppose this tax on the basis that the majority of those who will pay it will never utilize the service (not even hypothetically since they won’t suddenly forget how to speak English) when the same applies to the majority in the alternative scenario.

Maybe they could require that all immigrants either speak English when they arrive or have to pay a fee to come here.

It just sounded like a cheap and easy ‘policy’ to ride into the Euro elections with to me…

Name of fund/area of funding
Department Amount Description ESOL DIUS £289m (2006/7) Funding for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) training. Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant DCSF £187.6m (2008-9) For schools working with English as an Additional Language. Cohesion CLG £50m (over three years) – £16.6m per year. £50million over the next three years to support local areas in preventing and managing community tensions. This comprises: £34million in area based grant; £3million to support the National Improvement and Efficiency Strategy to develop regional and local capacity to meet community cohesion challenges; £4.5 million to help schools and others offer positive activities for young people with a focus on community cohesion; and £7.5 million to support inter-faith work. Connecting Communities Plus grants programme
CLG
£18m (over three years – £6m per year) Funding for activities which encourage race equality and community cohesion. Migration Statistics Improvement Programme Cross-departmental £12m £12 million cross-government programme led by ONS and the National Statistician to improve the population and migration statistics, including those at the local level. Will deliver improved local estimates and projections by 2010, in time to calculate the next three year local government finance settlement from 2011-12. Exceptional Circumstances Grant DCSF £6m (2008/9) To support schools with a rapid growth in pupil numbers and/or increase in pupils who have English as an Additional Language. Rough sleepers (London Boroughs) CLG £600,000 For central London Boroughs for their work with EEA nationals who are rough sleepers.

Total £517.8m Per year

Sigh, visa charges are reciprocal.

What this means is that any Brit trying to get a visa to go to any of those countries that this charge is applied to will have to pay an equal and extra charge.

Because visa charges are reciprocal.

Not to mention that most of these migrants these days are only entering the country if they have a definite right, definite need, or definite skill set. If there are those coming to fill jobs why aren’t the companies paying the £50? If they’re not coming in for jobs (and aren’t asylum seekers, in which case they’re irrelevant to this) then either they have a good reason to be allowed by the government (ex-pat perhaps) or are students and have a perfectly adequate support base set up already.

Meanwhile thousands of people from the EU come in whether they are able to deal with living in England or not, whether they are here for jobs or not, and don’t need to be charged a thing.

When is this persecution of non-EU immigrants going to stop?

Newmania: In other words a fairly small amount of our tax money going towards ensuring we develop properly and don’t stagnate. Good stuff.

“If the immigrants themselves don’t get charged for these services they will come out of general taxation revenue presumably. Which means that the bulk of the English speaking population will pay for a service (language teaching of their own native tongue) that they will never use.”

Let’s not get in to the direct usage argument, because there are countless other examples of uses of my money that go towards things I don’t even remotely see a direct benefit from. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a greater holistic and indirect benefit through societies gain. In conclusion, don’t talk such simplistic bollocks.

“Because visa charges are reciprocal.”

Which makes a difference because…?

I assume the above statistics for immigration are for successful applications. I am aware that there can be a high proportion of paid up applications that are rejected, the visa fee is never refunded.

http://www.interface.edu.pk/students/Aug/UK-study-visa.asp

I am particularly aware that in some African states where it can be difficult to obtain the correct documentation for the visa application, despite providing all evidence requested, the visa office will turn around and ask for further difficult to gather evidence. In one case I am personally aware of, the applicant was asked to provide evidence of the mortgage on the property that they would be staying at!

Lee (8): I could be wrong but I didn’t read Fellow Traveller’s comment as suggesting that we should abandon universal taxation because he/she was against people paying for services they don’t use, just that in this case it is not unfair to ask everyone entering the country to pay the same amount whether they need translators or not.

If the burden of this payment is to fall only upon those who require translators then they will be paying more than English speakers, which would appear to be discriminatory.

Whether £50 adds up to much of a saving to the British taxpayer is another matter: that’s around 50p per week over two years. It looks more like a symbolic gesture to please the tabloids rather than a genuine attempt to relieve a tax burden, if such exists.

@Lee Griffin (9):
““Because visa charges are reciprocal.”

Which makes a difference because…?”

Tit for tat increases for visa charges disproportionately affect immigrants from outside the EU. They also affect a huge number of cold war emigres (who are probably old) with UK passports, wishing to meet their families.

“I could be wrong but I didn’t read Fellow Traveller’s comment as suggesting that we should abandon universal taxation because he/she was against people paying for services they don’t use, just that in this case it is not unfair to ask everyone entering the country to pay the same amount whether they need translators or not.”

I don’t think they suggested that either, but you can’t argue about taxation use that doesn’t directly and positively affect you without looking much closer to home and at much bigger budget spends. In this case it *is* unfair to ask everyone entering the country to pay the same amount regardless of need…especially when the vast majority of people that are entering the country do NOT have to pay anything, whether they need the translators or not.

To quickly pick up a couple of points.

Broadly speaking, Lee’s correct is suggesting that direct usage arguments are unhelpful when discussing taxation, except in cases such as this where we’re dealing with something that’s being pitched in the media as a hypothecated tax.

One point of unfairness that I didn’t make explicit is that a flat rate surcharge on visas will inevitably have a disproportionate impact in migrants from developing countries where incomes are substantially lower.

But the big problem here is that the difficulties that local authorities due to the costs of inward migration aren’t because we don’t raise enough revenue from migrants but because our hopelessly overcentralised and bureaucratic tax system means that local authorities are amongst the last to see the benefits of economic migration. This is one of those problems that could be easily solved if a larger proportion of tax revenue were to collected and expended locally without having first to pass through central government.

All this assumes the visas are dirt cheap in the first place. We are currently renewing my spouse’s visa (basically so we can stay married in the same country as each other – I’m a British citizen) and the cost is £850, on top of the £850 we paid two years ago for her to stay the first time round. On top of the couple of hundred she paid to come in the first place. On top of the £50 or so she will pay to take the Life in the UK test. While she’s here she’s worked, and paid as much tax and national insurance as me.

Fellow traveller said: “I think the government should charge Americans around £1,000 each for a Visa because of the increased risk of terrorism caused by their presence on British soil”.
i agree with him actually. Also why should we pay for translator, while government does not use it for us. People whoever using these kind of service they should pay for it.