Migrants who appeal after being refused a visa to visit family in the UK cost taxpayers £1 million a week, campaigners have said.
Migration Watch UK said the system, in which migrants can appeal at no cost to themselves, "should be stopped immediately".
The number of appeals against the refusal of family visas has increased six-fold to around 50,000 in 2010, compared with just 8,000 before the charges were abolished by the previous Labour government in 2002, figures showed.
According to the latest estimates, each one costs an average of £927, totalling some £50 million a year, the campaign group said.
It called for the system to be replaced with tighter controls to restrict the number of people able to apply for family visas, which it said could reach up to 120 people for a middle-aged person in Britain.
These include an applicant's spouse, father, mother, son, daughter, grandfather, grandmother, grandson, granddaughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece or first cousin.
The father, mother, brother or sister of the applicant's spouse could also be eligible, along with the spouse of the applicant's son or daughter or the applicant's immediate step-family.
Sir Andrew Green, the group's chairman, said: "At a time of severe financial stringency for UK families it is an outrageously generous system which taxpayers should no longer be expected to fund.
"It should be stopped immediately, the definition of 'family visitor' tightened, charges reintroduced and consideration given to bonds to ensure people actually leave at the end of their visit."
He added: "In these straitened times there are much better uses for our money."