UK Immigration News

The Home Office, the UK government department that deals with immigration matters, has announced that it will stop accepting applications for Tier 1 (General) visa extensions from 6th April 2015.

The Tier 1 (General) visa stream opened in 2008 as a replacement for the Highly Skilled Migrant Program (HSMP). It was part of the new five-tier points based immigration system introduced by the last Labour government.

The debate in the UK about Scottish independence continues ahead of a referendum that will be held on Thursday 18th September 2014. The latest Westminster politician to intervene is Labour's Yvette Cooper who has said that the Scottish National Party (SNP) must 'come clean' on its immigration policy.

All three major political parties at the Westminster parliament; the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, oppose Scottish independence. Only the SNP, which is currently the party in power in Scotland supports independence.

The UK Independence Party has launched its campaign for the elections to the European Parliament in May. The party has launched a poster campaign which has been funded by a millionaire businessman, Paul Sykes, who is a vocal opponent of the EU.

One of the posters features a finger pointing out from the poster at the viewer below which is printed '26million people in Europe are looking for work. And whose jobs are they after?'

Artur Debski, a Polish MP from the opposition Your Movement party, has spent two weeks living in London experiencing the life of a Polish migrant looking for work. Mr Debski intended to raise awareness of the issue of emigration from Poland. He says that many young Poles leave to live and work elsewhere which is a problem for the Polish economy and may even affect national security because fewer people will be left at home to defend the country.

The UK's opposition Labour Party has criticised the Coalition government for its failure to 'get a grip on illegal immigration'. The shadow immigration minister, David Hanson accused the government of 'a shocking record…that the government should be ashamed of'.

Mr Hanson was speaking after he received a breakdown of statistics on arrests of suspected illegal immigrants in the UK for 2013. 4,535 people were arrested over the course of the year. Only one third of those, 1,585 people were deported. There were 15 prosecutions.

A respected political commentator has warned that the UK's Conservative Party, headed by Prime Minister David Cameron, may lose power at the next election in 2015 because it's policies are unpopular amongst immigrant voters.

Mary Riddell, who has written for many of the UK's national newspapers including The Guardian, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Telegraph says that the Conservatives' immigration policies are unpopular amongst British citizens from ethnic minorities which may have unintended electoral consequences.