London, Dec. 8 (PTI): Britain plans to impose a £500 surcharge on each of the 90,000 migrants entering the country every year to work, study or join family members.

The surcharge is expected to raise £450 million a year, a quarter of the £1.8 billion annual cost of Britain’s immigrant and asylum system, The Guardian reported today. Home office officials have justified the move to surcharge migrants saying that they make a “windfall gain through being granted access to the UK labour market.”

“Economic migrants benefit in many ways working in the UK, over and above a higher salary expectation, and it is appropriate to pass on some of the costs of these benefits on to migrants through a further one-off charge upon application,” a home office background document said.