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New Zealand’s embassy in Washington D.C. has recruited Stuart Jolly - a former campaign field director for US president Donald Trump - to aid the country’s push for access to US E1 Treaty Trader and E2 Treaty Investor visas.
UK schools desperate to recruit teachers are hiring foreign educators on Tier 5 visas rather than Tier 2 visas, according to the anti-immigration Migration Advisory Committee (MAC). The government committee published its ‘Review of Teachers’ report recently and found that schools are turning to the short-term, Tier 5 visa to plug a chronic skills shortage.
Earlier this year in a post on his company’s blog, Ethan Diamond the founder and CEO of Bandcamp – an online music store and platform for artist promotion that caters for independent musicians – has pledged to donate all of Bandcamp’s proceeds from Friday February 3 to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in support of immigrants against the US Visa “muslim ban”.
A series of changes under the Immigration Act, 2016 will substantially increase the cost of applications for Tier 2 Visas by employers with Tier 2 Sponsorship Licences who allocate Tier 2 Certificates of Sponsorship (CoS) on or after 6 April, 2017. The much maligned Immigration Skills Charge was among the UK Visa changes.
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have confirmed plans for more scrutiny of foreign workers in the US on L1 visas in 2017. The plans mean that Indian IT companies, with a base in the US, will face more frequent visits from USCIS officials. Donald Trump has mentioned a number of times that he would make it harder for companies to employ overseas skilled workers.
According to a report published in the Hindustan Times, Indian nationals secured almost 60% of the Tier 2 skilled worker visas granted by the UK in the year ending September 2016, despite UK visa numbers falling to their lowest level since 2014.