Immigration news

UK Immigration Minister Damian Green announced that the UK Border Force will be recruiting an additional 70 staff at Heathrow Airport to deal with long queues. He said the staff would be brought in following the Olympics to to cover for immigration officers taking leave after the end of Olympics and to handle the expected surge when tens of thousands of students arrive in the UK for the new academic year.

Under new immigration rules, the UK Border Agency is planning to remove the full right of appeal for all immigrants applying to enter the UK on a family visitor visa in July 2012. However, due to interim measures the change will not affect immediate family members who will retain the full right of appeal until 2014. In all refused visa cases, applicants will still be able to appeal on limited grounds such as human rights or race discrimination grounds.

Australian immigration officers will be attending the 2012 Xstrata Mount Isa Mining Expo in Queensland from 16-18 May in order to provide information on Australian visa programs and the upcoming changes to the skilled migration program.

Immigration to Germany has increased substantially, reaching its highest level in 16 years , according to government figures. The immigration increase is partially due to the thousands of arrivals from economically struggling countries like Greece and Spain.

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) has announced that they believe easier visa processes are important and integral to stimulating economic growth and job creation throughout the tourism industry.The WTTC argued that the G20 Countries which consists of many of the major economies in the World has an important duty to help boost their international tourist numbers. Research by the WTTC stated that the G20 could boost tourism numbers by an additional 122 million, generating an extra USD$206 billion in tourism exports and creating over five million additional jobs by 2015.

US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that, as of 11 May 2012, it has already received 36,700 H-1B cap-subject petitions out of the 65,000 available visas. Additionally, they have already received 14,800 H-1B visa petitions for foreigners with US advanced degrees out of the 20,000 available visas. This means that on 27 April 2012 there were only 28,300 visas left under the H-1B regular visa cap and 5,200 for the H-1B visa advanced degree level visa cap.