Immigration news

The UK immigration minister, Mark Harper, has announced that there is to be a new system of checks made on those applying for Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) visas.

Mr Harper delivered a written statement to the House of Commons on 30th January 2013 in which he announces that there are to be 'changes in the immigration rules that will bring about urgent changes to tackle abuse in the Entrepreneur migration route while protecting genuine entrepreneurs'. The statement says that the new rules will be introduced on Thursday 31st January 2013.

President Barack Obama gave a speech in Las Vegas on Tuesday, 29th January 2013, in which he told Americans that the time has come for the US to reform its immigration system.

The President's speech was light on detail but he laid out the principles that will underlie his immigration reform proposals while speaking at Del Sol High School. In the hall were a collection of national and local politicians, many of them of Hispanic descent.

A bipartisan group of eight senior Senators has announced that they have drawn up a framework agreement for US immigration reform legislation. The Senators made their announcement on Monday 28th January 2013. The group includes the 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, Senator for Arizona and Lindsay Graham from North Carolina, another long-standing Republican advocate of immigration reform. The legislation will almost certainly be passed by the Senate when it votes on the bill later this year. However, this does not mean that the legislation will become law in the US.

Four senators, two Republicans and two Democrats, have come together to sponsor a new bill in the Senate that could, if it became law, see the US grant 300,000 H-1B visas a year. It would also see a rise in the number of employment based green cards granted to foreign graduates from US universities and allow the spouses of H-1B visa holders to work.

The senators, Orrin Hatch (Republican, Utah), Marco Rubio (Republican Florida), Amy Klobuchar (Democrat, Minnesota) and Chris Coons (Democrat, Delaware) announced the proposed law The Immigration Innovation Act of 2013 on Tuesday 29th January 2013. The main provisions are:

The UK's immigration minister has announced changes to the UK's citizenship test. Mark Harper said that the changes were necessary because the old test tested people's knowledge of 'how to claim benefits' whereas the new test would 'encourage participation in British life'.

Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the chief executive of Tata Consulting Services says that the UK government should improve 'labour mobility' to increase levels of inward investment. He said 'Britain must simplify the visa system for workers wanting to come in and out'. He told UK newspaper The Sunday Telegraph that this would help the UK to continue to recover from the global financial crisis of 2008.