After Outsourcing, Foreign Students are Facing ‘Undesirable’ Visa Costs in UK

Studying abroad requires quite a lot of formalities to be fulfilled starting from the admission to the visa and the livelihood affordability as well. The visa system particularly takes the longest period of time possible to get sanctioned and also a lot of formalities are needed to be fulfilled.

Recently foreign students going to the United Kingdom for pursuing their studies complained regarding facing unnecessary visa costs after the outsourcing happened.

Last year on November the visa processing was handed over to the private firm name Sopra Steria. Ever since this outsourcing took place people started complaining about facing weird and unnecessary obstacles while getting their visa’s done. Also, the foreign students now have to go through an unnecessary series of verification and also have to pay a fee starting from £60.

Apart from all of these students also complained that they have been facing issues while navigating the Sopra Steria website, also appointments are not being made smoothly.

Many of them have paid fees of around £100 and £200 but still could not get an actual appointment for getting their visa’s made on time. Majority of the students did not get the appointment and also the company refused to refund the amount invested in getting an appointment.

This system of visa sanctioning is undoubtedly affecting the numbers of foreign students who are planning to come to the United Kingdom and peruse their education further.

Sopra Steria’s whole scheme of getting visa’s done for a foreign student is considered as a scam; they started providing emergency appointments to students for £100- £200. Also, they planned to give premium appointments for people seeking luxury for a fee starting of £200.

All of these additional charges are definitely not doing any good for the people. People are investing all the money yet to pay the majority of the times the appointments are getting fixed and also not everyone is financially stable enough to afford to pay further prices after what they are putting into getting enrolled in the institution.

Majority of the students complained that it is nearly impossible to get a free appointment for getting their visa done. Some of the students even said that for spending hours and hours they could not get an appointment due to technical errors in the website and ultimately had to give up on their academics.

Where other countries are pouring their efforts to attract more and more foreign students every year, The United Kingdom is doing the opposite. They are partially exploiting to students who are making a huge impact on the education system of the country and also are wasting unnecessary money from their resources.

This process is full of discrepancies and leading to a decrease in the number of students who are highly eligible to come and study in the renowned institutions of the United Kingdom.

In 2017 Sopra Steria was grounded for its involvement with SBS a collaboration it made with the Department of Health and made 5,000,000 pieces of medical correspondence went missing without any record.