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Immigration news

A report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the US Department of Homeland Security (DOH) has claimed that US immigration staff find it difficult to assess whether applicants for L-1B visas have 'specialized knowledge'.

L1 visas are intra-company transfer visas which allow international companies to transfer a member of staff, who has worked for them for at least one year in the last three years, to work in the US from its operations elsewhere.

There are two distinct L1 visas;

There has been a huge increase in the number of unaccompanied children arriving on the United States border with Mexico. President Obama has declared this 'an urgent humanitarian situation' and has asked Congress for $160m in funding to provide accommodation and other types of support for the children who have come into the US from Mexico and Central America.

The UK will announce new measures to make it easier for Chinese nationals to get UK visas during a three day state visit to the UK by Chinese premier Li Keqiang. The UK's Home Secretary, Theresa May will announce the measures during the visit.

Last week the Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, warned that Chinese investors were being deterred from investing in the UK because of difficulties in obtaining UK visas.

Over the last few years, the UK government has announced several changes to make it easier for Chinese nationals to get UK visas but Mr Liu said that these changes were 'far from enough'.

A poll of Chinese millionaires reveals that 65% of them want to gain permanent residence in overseas Countries. They give various reasons for wishing to do so such as a desire to access better education for their children, a desire to escape the extreme pollution found in much of China and legal uncertainty about the status of their wealth in China.

After twenty years of rapid economic growth, It is estimated that there are some one million US dollar millionaires in China. Hurun, a Chinese company based in Shanghai interviewed 400 such millionaires about their attitudes to emigration.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has said that London can only thrive if it continues to welcome immigrants but he has added that, once immigrants arrive, they must be strongly encouraged to integrate into British society.

Speaking at Investment 2020, an investment conference in London, Mr Johnson, who studied classics at Oxford, compared the capital to two city states in ancient Greece; Athens and Sparta. Mr Johnson said that London would do better to follow the example of Athens, rather than Sparta, if it is to survive and prosper.

A poll suggests that the defeat of House of Representatives majority leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary election was not, as the press initially reported, caused by his support for immigration reform. The defeat was caused instead by Mr Cantor's personal unpopularity, the poll shows.

Mr Cantor's defeat was greeted with incredulity in Washington. He was a high-flier in the Republican Party and was expected to replace John Boehner as speaker of the House when Mr Boehner retires. Now his political career is over.