Immigration news

The UK Border Agency announced they will no longer be processing visas at the application centre at the British Embassy in Tehran, Iran and the entire embassy will be closed until further notice."We have now closed the British embassy in Tehran. We have decided to evacuate all our staff and as of the last few minutes, the last of our UK-based staff have now left Iran," said British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen will push to increase Australia's refugee intake by almost 50 percent at Australia Labor Party's national conference this weekend. Under Bowen's proposal, Australian immigration would allow more refugees to reside in Australia, increasing the current figure of 13,750 to as many as 20,000 people annually."I have had the view for some time that we could and should take more refugees," he told ABC Radio on Thursday.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced they have received enough petitions for graduate level skilled workers under the H-1B visa program to meet the cap of 65,000 for fiscal year 2012. This is the earliest the visa cap has been reached in the past three years, signifying renewed demand for this visa program.Each year on April 1 the USCIS begins accepting H-1B petitions for the new fiscal year; USCIS announced the cap for H-1B visa applications was officially reached on 22 November, two months ahead of last year.

Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced last week that federal funding of immigrant settlement services in most Canadian provinces and territories will be increased for the 2012-2013 fiscal year. The funding goes towards services that help new immigrants settle in Canada.Some of the largest immigration settlement funding increases will be for Prince Edward Island, Yukon and Saskatchewan; Ontario is the only province to receive a decrease in funding. Quebec is not included in these figures as they handle their own immigration program.

Australian Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Bowen, announced today that the immigration department will implement a new visa fee system starting in 2012. Student visas will see a decrease in visa costs while other visas will see an increase in visa application fees.

The US Department of Homeland Security has announced that Russian nationals visiting Guam will be able to come under the US visit visa waiver scheme, but they did not immediately announce a timeline for when the new policy would go into place.The announcement from DHS came last week and states the new policy will permit Russian visitors to visit Guam without US visas for up to 45 days. The visa waiver will also allow, on a case-by-case basis, eligible Russian nationals to visit the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) for tourism.