Home Secretary Priti Patel confirms plans to introduce a new Electronic Travel Authorization for foreign visitors.
The British government confirmed plans to tax EU citizens and other foreign nationals who will come to visit the country as part of a broader reform aimed at making the border safer.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said her department would pass legislation to introduce a new Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) that she said would help the government track more accurately the number of people entering and leaving the UK. Great. It will apply to visitors without a visa or immigration status, in addition to British and Irish citizens.
During her speech on the government’s new immigration plan, Ms. Patel noted that many other countries already have similar systems to ETA, but declined to explain how much this would cost visitors.
The scheme will reflect the US Electronic Travel Authorization System (ESTA), which costs $ 14 per traveler. The EU is also introducing a similar program, known as the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS), which is expected to start in 2022 and will be implemented for UK citizens at a rate provided by 7 euros.
“We will have greater accuracy on the data, we will be able to count who enters and who leaves our country. “This will make us have accurate data, such as in terms of the number of emigrants, without speculating in this way whether these figures have an upward or downward trend,” said Mrs. Patel.
Visitors will fill out an online form before traveling to the UK, which will enable the Home Office to conduct security checks and make decisions about whether someone should be allowed to enter the country at an early stage.
ETA is expected to take effect by 2025, but according to Salma Shah, a former special adviser to Sajid Javid when he was Home Secretary, “We will probably see a lot more para changes before we see a real solution immigration model and practices on how we offer the immigration system. ”
The digital border changes are just one element of the immigration law reforms outlined in Ms.’s speech. Patel.
The Secretary of the Interior reaffirmed plans to speed up the process of removing undocumented immigrants and crack down on those who illegally transport people from other states, who will face 14 years in prison, the maximum sentence for the crime.
Patel also vowed to move forward with an asylum system reform, which she said had already cost UK taxpayers 1 1 billion this year. She insisted that the aim of the reform package is to place security and innovation at the heart of post-Brexit Britain’s immigration policy, and dismissed claims that Britain was withdrawing from the world.
