UK Immigration News

The British government has announced recently a plan to roll out the Super Priority Visa Service to a number of new countries, beginning in April next year.

The service is currently only available to business travellers applying for visit visas from India and China, and offers a visa decision within 24 hours. The scheme currently receives around 150 applications per month.

The countries which are to be added to the service are:

UK politicians Boris Johnson (Conservative) and Nigel Farage (UKIP) have both recently called for the UK to adopt an immigration system similar to that of Australia. These statements are not entirely accurate. In reality the UK has had a points system for about six years.

The UK visa program was overhauled in 2008 by the previous Labour government. The UK then ended up with a points system similar in some respects to the Australian points system. This replaced the previous UK visa system which had over 80 different visa options.

A UK religious leader has criticised politicians for demonising immigrants who come to the UK.

Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, spoke out after Defence Secretary Michael Fallon commented that some parts of the UK were being 'swamped' by foreign migrants.

Fallon has since been forced to apologise for his comments. However he continues to insist that the number of migrants coming to the UK was putting pressure on UK services such as housing and healthcare.

A recent parliamentary report reveals serious problems with the UK's immigration system.

The report by the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has criticised £1bn wasted on cancelled IT projects. The report also says that there are 50,000 missing asylum seekers who have vanished from the system, and who cannot be traced. There is also a huge backlog of 29,000 unprocessed asylum applications dating back to 2007.

A UK business and education minister has admitted that it may be impossible to control the number of migrants arriving in Britain from the EU.

Nick Boles said that the British Prime Minister David Cameron cannot stop 'very large' numbers migrating to the UK, due to the EU's freedom of movement laws, which he describes as a 'fundamental principle of the EU.' Like David Cameron Nick Boles is also a Conservative Party MP.

A leading academic has criticised the UK government's tough and complicated international student visa requirements, saying that he is 'baffled' by the policy.

Professor Andrew Hamilton is the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. He spoke out at his annual speech to the university; the audience included a number of academics.

He pointed out that 'for the first time in decades, the number of international students at our universities has dropped, most markedly from India.'