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The Ministry of Interior has denied rumors that it has stopped issuing visas to the immediate relatives of expatriate residents. Major General Nasser Al Awadi Al Menhali, Director-General of the Naturalization and Residency Department, told Gulf News that visas are still being issued to immediate family members, and especially to parents.

He added that a husband has the right to sponsor his wife, parents and in-laws. Wives in turn have the right to sponsor their husbands, parents and in-laws. Parents have the right to sponsor their children if they are under the age of 21. The ministry takes into consideration humanitarian and social imperatives and sometimes issues visas to children above the age of 21 who want to visit their families or continue their education.

A local Arabic-language newspaper reported yesterday that the Naturalisation and Residency Department had stopped issuing visas to parents of residents, but continued to issue them to husbands, wives and children. The report prompted panicked expatriates to call newspapers and residency department offices.

Al Menhali said there had been no change in the UAE’s naturalisation and residency laws. Applicants are required to deposit a guarantee of Dh5,000, in addition to the visa application fee.

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New Zealand is to open a full Embassy in Vienna, Austria, in January 2011, Foreign Minister Murray McCully has announced. New Zealand already has a Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Vienna, which will now be co-located with the Embassy.

“New Zealand and Austria share many common values and have a good record of cooperation on international issues,” Minister McCully says.

“The Embassy in Vienna will help to consolidate New Zealand’s diplomatic footprint in Europe. Vienna is an important gateway into Central and Eastern Europe and it is the home of many significant international organizations. A key focus of the Embassy will be to develop trade and economic links with Austria and its neighboring region.”
Career diplomat Philip Griffiths will take up the position of Ambassador to Austria in January 2011. Mr Griffiths will also hold the position as New Zealand’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Vienna.

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Taiwan’s latest visa-refusal rate has met the requirement of the United States for its Visa Waiver Program (VWP), but there is no timetable for Taiwan’s inclusion in the program due to various technical issues, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) official said Thursday.

Taiwan’s U.S. visa refusal rate for fiscal year 2010 was 2.2 percent, much lower than the minimum requirement of 3 percent as stipulated for inclusion in the VWP and a great improvement over the 4.4 percent of 2009, said Bruce J.D. Linghu, director-general of MOFA’s Department of North American Affairs.

This was a “big step forward” to Taiwan’s eventual VWP inclusion, Linghu said, but a country’s visa-refusal rate is just one of the criteria considered when determining eligibility for VWP status.

To be admitted to the program, he said, a country must meet various requirements, such as enhanced law enforcement and security-related data-sharing with the U.S. The country is also required to maintain high counterterrorism, law enforcement, border control, and document security standards.

The U.S. expressed concern over Taiwan’s passport-application-and-issuance procedure, which does not require travelers to apply in person but is usually undertaken by travel agencies, Linghu said. William Stanton, director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the U.S. representative office in the absence of official bilateral ties, said in a recent interview that Taiwan’s inclusion in the VWP “is not a political problem but a legal issue.”
Citing media reports that human trafficking rings have smuggled Chinese citizens into the United States by falsifying or tampering with Taiwanese passports, Stanton said that this problem results from Taiwanese citizens not being required to apply for passports in person.

With this in mind, a new procedure will be tested in Taiwan next year requiring visa applicants to complete passport application in person, Linghu said. The measure will later be implemented nationwide, he added. The two sides will probably need to reach agreements on a number of issues, such as anti-terrorism. Linghu said. Moreover, it will take collaboration between at least four governmental agencies to secure VWP eligibility, he noted.

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Passport authorities at King Abdulaziz International Airport Haj Terminal, Saudi Arabia have turned away 61 pilgrims so far because of discrepancies in their documents and fingerprint records, a senior official said on Tuesday. The General Directorate of Passports has installed state-of-the-art equipment to detect fraudulent Haj visas at the Haj Terminal in Jeddah. The equipment can accurately detect forgeries using techniques such as ultraviolet rays, fingerprint comparisons and infrared. Any illegal additions, deletions and alterations can be detected with the help of these devices. Brig. Ayed Al-Harbi, a commander of the Passport Forces for Haj, said 61 pilgrims were not allowed entry into the country either because of discrepancies in information supplied in their travel documents or because fingerprint records showed they were blacklisted. All land, sea and air entry points to the Kingdom have been linked to the fingerprint system, so that any traveler entering the country will have to undergo fingerprint examinations, said Al-Harbi. He added that deported expatriates would not be allowed to come back as Haj pilgrims. Commander of the Passport Forces for Haj at KAIA, Col. Khalafallah Al-Tuwairaqi said the Passport Department is determined not to permit any deported expatriate with a criminal record to return to the country using a different passport. The special (passports) lounge, staffed by trained personnel of the Passport Department, will be operating round the clock during the Haj season under the supervision of the superintendent of the Anti-Forgery Unit Lt. Col. Abdul Rahman Al-Takhis, said Al-Tuwairaqi. The equipment will also alert immigration officials if there is a security warning about any of the pilgrims. The system contains passport data from a large number of countries so that any forgeries could be identified. Al-Harbi said domestic pilgrims who attempt to enter the holy sites without Haj permits would be sternly dealt with. Passports officials at 16 entry points to Makkah are watching for violators of Haj and residence regulations, he said. Any traveler without a Haj permit or any vehicle carrying pilgrims without Haj permits will be stopped at these points. Those transporting illegal pilgrims will be fined up to SR10,000 for each pilgrim and will have their vehicle confiscated, he said. He added that 1,600 violators of residence regulations were detained and 2,900 pilgrims without permits were turned back up till Monday.

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The British government will create a new “entrepreneur visa” and reform its intellectual property laws to try to attract high-tech businesses.

Cameron will set out plans to transform a stretch of East London into a high-tech hub to rival Silicon Valley, starting with new investments from the likes of Internet search leader Google, computer chipmaker Intel and social networking site Facebook. “Right now, Silicon Valley is the leading place in the world for high-tech growth and innovation. But there’s no reason why it has to be so predominant,” Cameron will say in a speech, according to excerpts released in advance by his office.

The government last month announced a four-year plan of deep cuts in public spending to tackle a record budget deficit. Almost no area of government spending will be spared the axe and half a million public sector jobs are expected to be lost.

Cameron says he wants to create better conditions for the private sector to generate the jobs and growth that the public sector will no longer be able to provide. The proposed new “entrepreneur visa” would allow people with great business ideas and the backing of serious investors to set up shop more easily in Britain.

The proposal comes at a time when the government is working on plans to introduce a cap on immigration, in line with a pre-election pledge from Cameron’s Conservative party. Some in the Liberal Democrat party, the junior partner in the two-party coalition government, are uncomfortable with the cap. Business Secretary Vince Cable, a Lib Dem, has argued that it would harm business interests by keeping top talent out.

The “entrepreneur visa” could be part of Cameron’s response to those concerns.

Copyright Laws. Cameron will also say that a company like Google could never have started up in Britain because of a copyright system that is not as open to innovation as it is in the United States. So I can announce today that we are reviewing our intellectual property laws, to see if we can make them fit for the Internet age. I want to encourage the sort of creative innovation that exists in America,” he will say.

Cameron will also say that the government has had a series of meetings since it came into office in May with technology companies and venture capital investors to discuss ways to turn East London into a world-class high-tech center. These talks have led to a series of commitments from companies to invest in East London, previously a deprived residential area which is already the focus of regeneration efforts as it will host the London 2012 Olympics.

Projects will include an Intel research lab focusing on performance computing and energy efficiency, an “innovation hub” from Google where researchers, developers and academics can pool ideas, and a permanent London home for Facebook’s “Developer Garage” programme for new talent in high-tech fields.

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A drug-smuggling tunnel and approximately 30 tons of marijuana were discovered early Wednesday in the Otay Mesa section of San Diego, said officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

The officials said the tunnel, which contained much of the drugs, was roughly 600 yards long and had been used to shuttle marijuana between California and Tijuana, Mexico, for some time.

exican officials said they found five tons of marijuana at the southern end of the tunnel. The discovery comes weeks after Mexican authorities seized 134 tons of marijuana in Tijuana, a record-breaking amount for the country. Officials said it was unclear whether the tunnel discovered Wednesday was related.

In the last four years, authorities have found more than 75 such tunnels along the border.

Read more…

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On 19 July 2010, the UK Government introduced a limit on the number of initial applications that can be issued under Tier 1 (General) of the points-based system until 31 March 2011. The limit does not affect applications from dependents or applications to extend existing Tier 1 visas.

The UK Border Agency administers the limit on a monthly basis. In order to avoid breaching the monthly allocation for October 2010 we stopped issuing visas for Tier 1 (General) on 20 October. The new limit for this month has opened today, 1 November 2010, and we are now restarting the granting of visas for successful Tier 1 (General) applications. All applications are processed in the order in which they are received at post in so far as that is operationally possible.

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Details of massive fraud and abuse of the popular H-2B work visa program have been made public by a government report, which shows that in one of such cases more than 87 Indian nationals paid at least USD 20,000 each to enter the US illegally.

“Several recent convictions have shown that some employers and recruiters may be abusing the foreign workers in the program,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in its letter to Congressman George Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor.

The report details 10 cases of wrongdoings that showed violations in areas such as unfair wages for employees, excessive fees charged to employees, and fraudulent documentation submitted to federal agencies to circumvent program rules. The 10 cases that we reviewed demonstrate fraud and abuse committed by recruiters and employers participating in the H-2B visa program and operating in 29 states.

“The 10 cases that we reviewed demonstrate fraud and abuse committed by recruiters and employers participating in the H-2B visa program and operating in 29 states,” the report made public yesterday said.In six of the 10 cases GAO reviewed, there were allegations that employers did not pay their H-2B employees the established hourly wage, overtime, or both.

In six cases, employers charged their H-2B workers fee that was for the benefit of the employer or charged excessive fee that brought employees’ wages below the hourly federal minimum wage. Also in eight of the 10 cases, employers were alleged to have submitted fraudulent documentation.

The H2B working visa is a non-immigrant visa which allows foreign nationals to enter into the US temporarily and engage in non-agricultural employment that is seasonal, intermittent, or based on a peak load need. According to GAO, a company in Louisiana obtained USD 1.8 million from a fraudulent H-2B visa conspiracy to bring 87 Indian nationals into the United States illegally.

The company submitted fraudulent H-2B documentation to federal agencies allegedly seeking workers from India.It charged at least USD 20,000 each for the H-2B visas but never employed the Indians. The GAO report said representatives of the firm traveled to India to assist the Indians with the application process and corresponded with the US Consulate on behalf of the workers. These conspirators were indicted on federal criminal charges in 2008.

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The Indian Government has agreed to streamline visa procedures for citizens from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines, said the Financial Times of India on October 31.

Citizens from the four ASEAN nations will be granted immigration visas to enter India at the border. The decision will come into force as of January 1 next year. India has finalised a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on developing tourism with ASEAN countries.

Around 3 million Indian people visit ASEAN countries each year and there are 380 flights from India to ASEAN countries every week. On India-ASEAN trade relations, the newspaper quoted Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the 8th ASEAN-India Summit in Hanoi, saying that ASEAN is a nucleus for the economic links that should be established in the Asia-Pacific region. The Indian PM also said he hoped that the necessary procedures for implementing the India-ASEAN free trade agreement on the exchange of goods will be completed soon.

In addition, the signing of cooperation agreements on services and investment will give fresh impetus to the two sides’ common goal of promoting comprehensive economic cooperation.

We hope that this will be a positive steps towards improving bilateral ties.

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Canada has admitted recently that its new visa application form, criticized by Russia for seeking sensitive information on applicants’ military service, aims to weed out visitors inadmissible to Canada. Citizenship and Immigration Canada ‘must protect the health and safety of Canadians, maintain the security of Canadian society and promote international justice and security by fostering respect for human rights’.

‘Temporary resident applicants from a number of countries have been asked questions regarding military, security and political activities that could make someone inadmissible in the past to ensure that officers have adequate information when determining admissibility to Canada.’ The new visa application form merely attempts to standardize various questions that have been asked before and eliminate the need for country-specific forms.

Earlier, Russia protested against the new visa application form issued by Canada, complaining it will ‘seriously complicate’ the application process for Russians and could provoke reciprocal measures. ‘The modified Canadian form goes beyond the conventional criteria, and its adoption goes against the global tendency to ease visa regimes,’ Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said at a briefing. The new form will ‘make the process for Russian citizens to receive Canadian visas much harder,’ he added. Russian tourist operators also complained this week that the form, required for visa applicants outside Canada, asks for information that is illegal for Russian citizens to disclose. Applicants are asked to provide details about military service, including location of the military unit and name of the commanding officer.