An increase in Immigration Department Fees
On the curb of the new Financial Year the Government has passed the Migration Amendment (Visa Application Charges) Regulation 2018 to target the Visa Application Charges (VAC). This legal instrument amends the existing Holy Grail Migration Regulations 1994 and effective from 1 July 2018 we will see an increase in VAC.
Alongside this, the Department has announced that credit card surcharges for payments made via MasterCard and Visa credit card will also be raised from 0.98% to 1.32%. In relation to other card services, the Department has not made any suggestions as to whether there will also be an increase to other forms of payment made via Amex, JCB, Diners Club and PayPal, which from the looks of it seem unaffected.
And whilst on the surface a surcharge increase of 0.34% may be seem relatively minor, when we marry this change with the VAC increase what is conceived is a substantial effect on the overall costs of a visa application.
Below we have curated an overall snapshot of the new costs of pertinent visa applications per the VAC increase:
AAT Application fees will also experience changes with an application to review a decision to increase to a fee of $1,764.
There are two reasons to explain such increases:
- The budget intentions of parliamentarians and to an avenue through which to generate a revenue of $410 million dollars over a four-year period.
- Alternatively, and a bit simpler to understand – none of us made it onto the nice list this Christmas in July.
With the announcement on these price increases, the Department of Home Affairs have also confirmed they will be closing its online systems earlier than previous years.
