UK Immigration News

UK Visas and Immigration has launched a new service for 'global business leaders' called 'The Great Club'. It is 'an invitation only service providing top business executives with bespoke support from UK visas and immigration'.

According to The website of the Home Office, the government department responsible for the UK's immigration and visa services, 'the club will start in the New Year as a 12 month pilot aimed at around 100 global business leaders who use the visa service and have strong links to the UK.

A report by a leading UK think tank has criticised the UK government's immigration policy saying that it is damaging the country's reputation as a leading destination for international students. The report recommends that students should be allowed to stay and work in the UK for six months after graduation on their Tier 4 student visa before having to transfer to another visa.

The UK's Prime Minister, David Cameron, has told journalists that it is likely that his government will not meet its target of reducing net immigration to the UK to 'tens of thousands' (taken to mean below 100,000) by 2015. Last week, the latest immigration figures showed that, immigration in the year to June 2013 rose by 15,000 to 182,000.

Mr Cameron said that immigration had fallen by about a third from the level it reached under the last Labour government of the UK when official figures suggested that net immigration ran at 250,000 a year.

Music promoters have complained that UK immigration is making it harder for international musicians to get visas to work in the UK. They say that the UK's Home Office has refused to issue visas on several occasions to internationally renowned artistes.

This has resulted in the cancellation of concerts. They say that this may well damage London's reputation as a venue for world music concerts.

Research from Oxford University's Migration Observatory has revealed that Scotland's immigrant population rose by 93% in the decade from 2001 to 2011 from about 191,500 to 369,284. The Scottish government has welcomed the research.

Much of the rise was caused by immigration from eastern Europe after 2004. In that year, eight countries including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined the EU. Citizens of these countries were then allowed to travel to the UK to live and work.

The Australian government has been defeated in the upper house of the Australian parliament in a vote on the reintroduction of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs). The Coalition which now governs Australia promised to reintroduce TPVs if elected at the last election.