According to a recent report, the Government of Australia has introduced a new system for visa fee to ensure that the taxpayers no longer have to subsidize their visa applications. This latest visa fee system is expected to generate approximately $613 million revenue over the period of four years.

Pursuant to this new visa fee system, the application fees for student visas will decrease by 5%, while a number of Business and Skills visas fees will increase by 5% to 15%.

In this connection, Chris Bowen, the Immigration and Citizenship Minister of Canada was quoted as saying that these new changes will also incorporate the introduction of visa fee for dependants of the candidates, which will be implemented from July, 2013.

He further went on to express that people who are migrating to Australia with their family members, their application fee will show some additional processing and checks for their family members.   However, there are no changes made to the humanitarian visas as part of this new visa application fee system.

Besides, some of the visa programs, like most of the visitor visa fee structure remain the same, as they are concern about the fact that the tourism industry of the nation should not get affected by it.

The said report has also revealed that from July, 2012, there will be a CPI increase to most of the visa application fee structures, while introducing a surcharge for optional services like visa labels.

Mr. Bowen further went on to add that to promote the online application use, the government of Australia is planning to introduce an extra charge for those, who make paper-based applications where an option of electronic visa is available to them.

However, there will be some other changes that will come into effect from July 2013. These changes will affect long term visa applications and applicants seeking further onshore visas.