Immigration news

Lowering US visa wait times for international visitors will form part of a new US National Travel and Tourism Strategy, which aims to attract 90 million tourists a year to America by 2027. The strategy was unveiled at the annual IPW convention in Orlando, Florida, which was attended by nearly 5,000 travel delegates from 60 countries.

 

Assistant secretary of commerce for industry and analysis, Grant Harris, announced the strategy to delegates as he revealed that the 90 million visitor target would top pre-pandemic totals of just under 80 million recorded in 2019.

Overseas travellers have blasted a UK visa system that charges them more than £500 to apply and a further £2.74 to send a follow-up email. Applicants told of their frustration at being asked to pay £531 without an option to check visa appointment availability – meaning that they had no guarantee that they could obtain a visa in line with their planned trips to the UK.

 

Tech industry giants such as Google, Amazon and Twitter are urging the Biden administration to scrap a US immigration ‘aging-out’ policy that forces the children of US visa holders out of the country once they pass the age of 21 if they don’t have their own US immigration status. 

 

Prince Charles has been told to ‘stay out of politics’ by Downing Street after criticising the government’s Rwanda-UK immigration plan. Charles, 73, described a policy that sends asylum seekers to Rwanda as ‘appalling’, sparking a backlash from Tory MPs, who said the comments could present ‘serious constitutional issues when Charles assumes the throne’.

 

A federal judge has thrown out a Biden US immigration directive that would have narrowed who can be targeted by US immigration agents for arrest and deportation. The federal judge sided with the states of Louisiana and Texas, which had challenged the policy proposed by the Biden administration.

 

In the aftermath of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, Britons have declared UK immigration to be a ‘positive’ thing. According to a new report charting the last 10 years – since the Queen’s last Jubilee in 2012 – Britons have seemingly ‘changed their views’ on immigration.

 

According to research by British Future – a UK-based thinktank and registered charity – attitudes in Britain towards immigrants have shifted significantly between the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and Platinum Jubilee. The report found that while ‘immigration still matters, fewer people now view it as a negative thing for the UK’.