Immigration news

The chief executive of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) has announced that he intends to establish a premium service for Tier 4 sponsors. He says that the service will cost £8,000 a year and will give UK universities who sign up a better service.

Rob Whiteman said that the new service would give Tier 4 sponsors 'a range of benefits' including• Access to a named account manager• Priority consideration of post-licence casework,• Monthly information reports on certificate allocations• Access to student eligibility checks.

The Tier 4 premium service is expected to be available from July 2013.

The UK Border Agency (UKBA) has said that it intends to raise its fees for all applications from 6th April 2013.

Most fees will rise by 3% in line with inflation. The greatest increases will be for dependants of main applicants applying from within the UK.

At present, dependants applying from within the UK pay only 50% of the fees paid by the main applicant. This will rise to 75% of the main applicant's fee from 6th April.

US immigration lawyers are warning that the entire year's quota of 65,000 H-1B 'specialty occupation' visas for the 2014 fiscal year may be allocated in a single week at the beginning of April 2013.

Today, 7th March 2013, shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper delivered a speech acknowledging that the last Labour government made 'mistakes' on immigration and laying out the party's new position and policies.

Ms Cooper was speaking at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) in London. She said that immigration was a difficult subject for politicians but too important to ignore. She said that the UK must not 'pull up the drawbridge on the outside world'. She said that immigration had enriched the UK but said that 'mass migration can create stresses and strains'.

US tech firms are supporting the proposed comprehensive immigration reform bill that is being drafted by a group of eight senators. Tech industry associations such as the Technology CEO Council are also supporting the bill. Marshall Fitz of the pro-immigration reform Center for American Progress told US TV station ABC, 'From a tactical perspective, this is their best chance in the short term of getting the reforms they care most about'.

During the early months of 2013, while Republicans and Democrats in Congress were negotiating ways to deal with the US budget deficit, some US commentators were wondering what would happen if they failed to reach an agreement. Now they have failed and, on March 1st, President Obama signed a Presidential Order cutting $85bn from the US federal budget in the next seven months.