Immigration newsletter 13 Oct 2010

There may be delays at immigration control at UK airports and ports during a two day strike by the PCS Union on Wednesday 13 and Thursday 14 October. The strike by a minority of UK Border Agency staff will affect UK border controls. The UK Border Agency says that the disruption should be minimal. However, UKBA also says that they will not know for sure how much disruption will be caused by the strike until the strike actually starts.

Lin Homer the chief executive of the UK Border Agency had the following to say:

'This strike action is fundamentally about the agency's efforts to modernise its working practices to deliver a more efficient and effective service.'

The UK Border Agency together with local government will be providing further assistance with your indefinite leave to remain applications if you are the husband or partner of a British citizen or someone with indefinite leave to remain in the UK. 

A local authority officer will check your indefinite leave to remain application before it is sent to UKBA under the new “settlement checking service”. The local authority officer will not be an expert on UK immigration and will not give immigration advice. UK Immigration feels that this service will help to make sure that applications are correct and complete before being sent to them.

US H-1Bs are still available. It looks as if not all visas will be used for the current fiscal year. There are currently about 14,000 visas left for the regular H-1B visa and about 5,000 visas left under the H-1B masters exemption. In past years all visas have been used up in a single day. You can also start work as soon as your visa is approved. In the past because of lack of availability of visas many people had to wait for many months before being able to start work.

At the moment there are probably enough H-1Bs to meet demand for the visas. However, when the economy improves in future there will be shortages of H-1B visas. One of the main reasons why employers do not apply for the H-1B is because of the expense of doing so. H-1B demand goes up during times of economic growth and goes down when the economy goes down. This is an indication that employers only employ people on H-1Bs when they have no choice. They cannot fill their vacancies locally.