The UK Government has been digitising and streamlining its border and immigration system to enhance security and improve the experience for travellers.
Since 8 January 2025, eligible travellers from around 82 countries, including nationals from Mauritius, who currently do not require a visa to travel to the UK, need an ETA.
Additionally, since last year, there has also been a wider roll-out of eVisas replacing paper ‘vignette’ visas, which have previously been granted to students and workers, among others.
To provide more details on these changes, the UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) Outreach Officer, Mr Lewis Cullen, led an interactive session at the British High Commission in Mauritius on 2 April to explain the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) and Electronic Visa (eVisa).
Edited excerpts from an interview with Platform Africa:
What is the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA), in a nutshell?
Since January, any Mauritian who wants to go to the UK for a short period who did not previously need a visa – for tourism or to visit family friends for instance – now needs what we call an ETA or Electronic Travel Authorisation.
The key thing to remember is this is not a visa, it’s something separate to that – let’s call it a small digital permission to travel to the UK. It’s really cheap to apply for, it’s currently £10 going up to £16 as of 9 April, or a thousand rupees.
What are the application timelines and duration?
The vast majority of applications are decided in less than three days, so the time taken on that is really minimal.
The real beauty of these ETAs is that they are multiple entry and they last for two years. So, once you’ve got the ETA, it covers all short trips to the UK over that two-year period.
Could you describe the process to apply for an ETA?
It takes about four and a half minutes. It’s really straightforward, and you can do it again through an app or through the website gov.uk.
The applicant will need to answer some very basic questions around – Have you got a criminal conviction? Have you ever been denied a UK visa? – so it’s very much a yes or no exercise.
The applicant will need to have their passport with them and we provide instructions on how to scan their passport. If it has a biometric chip it will hopefully provide us with plenty of information around their name, date of birth, where it was issued, so they don’t need to manually input that. It really is a seamless process.
If you’ve got a phone and you’ve got a passport, you can apply for an ETA.
If you have an ETA, do you also need a visa?
If you are just going to the UK for a short period of time, you do not need a visa, you just need this ETA.
Students at UK universities who previously needed a visa still need a visa and they don’t need an ETA. It’s an either/or, it’s either a visa or an ETA depending on what you’re doing in the UK.
If it’s a short visit for less than six months, ETA is the way to go.
Why has the UK Government introduced this scheme in Mauritius?
This is something that’s been applied globally. We are moving to a model where we have this universal permission to travel, so everyone going to the UK has some permission to travel to the UK, be that a visa, be that a British passport or be that the ETA.
We have already rolled it out to a large number of countries including the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and we are expecting in about a week to roll it out to the European Union as well. This is something that will apply to every nation whose citizens do not currently need a visit visa.
What would the travel purpose be?
Travel purpose can be anything that previously would not have required a visa, so for instance tourism, visiting family, visiting friends, business meetings, conferences, up to visits of six months at a time.
For longer duration visits where you are actually living in the UK such as studying at a UK university, being reunited with a spouse or a family member in the UK or working for a UK company, you still need a visa, that has not changed from before.
As from when is this ETA is coming in force in Mauritius?
The ETA came into force in January in Mauritius, so it is already in force.
We recommend that anybody planning to travel to the UK now should seriously seek to obtain an ETA. The risk of attempting to travel without an ETA to the UK is that people will not be allowed to board their flight and that they will encounter problems at the UK border.
How can someone apply for an ETA?
You can apply on gov.uk which is the British government website: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/apply-for-an-electronic-travel-authorisation-eta
With this new application process, how can people protect themselves from the risk of scams on third-party websites?
I would encourage people to only apply through gov.uk and not to use third-party sites, they can be more expensive and they can potentially not protect your personal data in the way that we would.
If it’s not entitled gov.uk, it’s not official, it’s not us. It will almost certainly be expensive and very possibly may compromise your personal data.
If it’s a third-party website, if anyone asks you to pay more than £10 or £16 for an ETA, it’s not legitimate and you should not go there.
Changes are also being introduced with regards to the UK visa scheme. Can you explain what is an eVisa?
For anyone who has a student, a work, a family, an existing long-term visa in their passport, we would strongly encourage them to convert that to an eVisa or a digital visa.
There’s no cost to this, it won’t change the amount of time their visa is valid for, but what it means is this old legacy paper visa vignette in their passport is replaced with a secure modern digital visa.
What are the benefits of an eVisa?
You can’t lose a digital visa, it can’t be stolen from you if you lose your passport and you don’t lose access to that visa.
It means that we know you’ve got a visa, so it will make your airport experience in the UK more seamless and it will hopefully make your experience at the UK border better.
As I say, there are no costs associated with that, so if you’ve got an existing UK visa for study, for work, for family, now is the time to convert it to an eVisa.
How does the ETA or the eVisa affect other countries in Africa?
The ETA only applies to nationals who previously did not need a visa to visit the UK for short periods.
So for someone from, for instance, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, their requirement to obtain a UK visit visa for short periods is unchanged. They are unfortunately not eligible for an ETA. What they are eligible for is an eVisa, for those of them with work, study, family, those longer term visas.
I would encourage anyone regardless of nationality who has a work, a study or a family visa to now look to convert it to an eVisa, particularly before 2 June. On that date, the old legacy Biometric Residence Permit cards that we used to issue to people, a sort of ID card with your immigration status on it, are no longer valid in any form. So we would recommend that people convert to an eVisa regardless of nationality by 2 June.
For more information on eVisas, see: https://www.gov.uk/get-access-evisa
