US immigration: Spouses of some H-1B visa holders can work

Two senior officials in the Obama administration have announced proposals to allow the spouses of some H-1B visa holders to work while in the US. Currently, spouses of H-1B visa holders are only allowed to work if they qualify for a work visa, such as an H-1B or L-1 visa, themselves.


The change would not apply to spouses of all H-1B visa holders but only to spouses of those H-1B visa holders who are skilled in one of the STEM subjects; science, technology, engineering and mathematics.


Penny Pritzker, the US Commerce Secretary, and Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary of Homeland Security, said that the changes could affect 97,000 people in the first year and another 30,000 people a year in future.

 

 

Public consultation

Pritzker and Mayorkas announced the proposal at a Washington press conference on Tuesday 6th May 2014. The change is due to be introduced on 5th July 2014 after a public consultation.


Ms Pritzker, a billionaire heiress to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, told journalists 'These individuals are American families in waiting. Many tire of waiting for green cards and leave the country to work for our competition. The fact is we have to do more to retain and attract world-class talent to the United States and these regulations put us on a path to do that'.


In January, during his State of the Union address, President Obama urged his administration to 'do more to help the entrepreneurs and small business owners who create most new jobs in America'. This proposal is designed to put the President's words into action.

 

 

28% of start-ups have one immigrant founder

Ms Pritzker said that about 28% of US business start-ups have at least one immigrant founder. She said that about 40% of America's 500 biggest firms were founded by immigrants. She said Sergey Brin of Google, Andy Gove of Intel and Jerry Yang of Yahoo were all immigrants who would have benefitted from the change.


Pritzker and Mayorkas also proposed a change to the regulations which would allow the employers of H-1B visa holders with STEM skills to classify them as 'outstanding' in their field. This would make it easier for the H-1B holder to qualify for a US permanent residence visa (or green card as they are known).


The H-1B visa is a temporary work visa for skilled foreign workers, usually graduates to work in a 'specialty occupation'. To be able to employ a foreign worker on an H-1B visa, a US employer must apply to US immigration with proof that the worker will be paid the prevailing rate for the job.

 

 

Degree equivalence

Only 85,000 H-1B visas are available each year; 65,000 of these are awarded to those with bachelor's degrees or, on rare occasions, those with a mixture of training and experience that amount to 'degree equivalence'. A further 20,000 may be issued to those with higher degrees.


Many businesses in the US are calling for there to be an increase in the number of H-1Bs available each year.


Last year, the Senate passed legislation which would raise the number of H-1Bs available to a maximum of about 200,000 a year. To become law, however, the law would also have to be passed by the House of Representatives. It does not seem likely that this will happen in the near future.

 

 

Trying to make system more attractive

Thus, the Obama administration is trying to amend the current system to make it more attractive to foreign applicants.
 

Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican from Alabama criticised the proposals. He said 'The administration is acting unilaterally to change immigration law in a way that hurts American workers.  

This will help corporations by further flooding a slack labour market, pulling down wages.'It is good news for citizens in other countries who will be hired. But for struggling Americans, it will only reduce wages, lower job opportunities, and make it harder to scrape by'.

 

 

Hyatt Hotels

Ms Pritzker's own family arrived in Chicago from the Ukraine in 1881 and quickly became successful lawyers, property magnates and hoteliers. The family is said to now be worth some $20bn.


Mr Mayorkas was born in Cuba and came to the US with his parents at the age of 1.


Global Visa Support offers a variety of programs in United States. Please visit our USA page for more information: http://www.globalvisasupport.com/usa.html

Canadian working holiday visa numbers soar

The number of young foreigners visiting Canada as part of the International Experience Canada (IEC) programme has risen sharply according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). CIC says that it expects some 20,000 young people, aged between 18 and 35, to arrive in Canada with IEC visas in 2014.


International Experience Canada allows young people from 32 countries with relevant bilateral treaties with Canada to spend a year living and working in Canada (the minimum age is 18 and the maximum age is 30 for some countries and 35 for others). Applicants from the Republic of Ireland can stay for two years.


The recession which has continued in much of Europe since 2008 means that the scheme is particularly attractive for European applicants. CIC received 3,850 applications for IEC visas from Irish applicants within 11 minutes of beginning to accept applications on the evening of 13th March.


There is similar demand among applicants from other European nations.

 

 

Visas made available in tranches

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) releases the visas for different countries in tranches on different days. So, for example, Ireland has a quota of 7,700 IEC visas. 3,850 were on offer on 13th March and a further 3,850 were made available on 1st April.


Canadian citizens are able to take similar working holidays in the 32 eligible countries but Canadian Unions say that three times as many foreign nationals come under the Canadian working holiday scheme than Canadians coming under similar schemes in other Countries.


This has led some in Canada to question the value of the program. Some critics have even suggested that the Canadian government is using the IEC program to allow cheap foreign labour into Canada.

 

 

Temporary Foreign Worker Program

Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) allows Canadian employers to employ foreign workers if they first obtain a Labour Market Opinion (LMO) which shows that there is no Canadian worker available to do the job.


Doug Parton, the Business Manager of the Ironworkers union Local 97 in British Columbia says 'This program (the IEC) circumvents the requirement for employers to prove there is a shortage of Canadian workers before hiring non-Canadians and also removes the requirement for employers to pay the prevailing wage rate for a particular job'.


Mr Parton continued 'It's a complete free for all and it's an attack on wages'.

 

The 32 countries which participate in International Experience Canada are

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Chile
• Costa Rica
• Croatia
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• Estonia
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Hong Kong
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• South Korea
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Mexico
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Poland
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Taiwan
• Ukraine
• United Kingdom

Global Visa Support offers a variety of programs in Canada. Please visit our Canadian page for more information: http://www.globalvisasupport.com/canada.html

New UK figures to show rise in immigration from EU

The next set of official UK immigration statistics are likely to show an increase of more than 25% in the number of Romanians and Bulgarians living in the UK since the same time last year, according to the Migration Observatory at Oxford University.


Dr Carlos Villas-Silva, a senior research at the Migration Observatory, said 'It is almost certain that we are going to see an increase in that number from the first quarter in 2013 to the first quarter in 2014," he said. "We would expect at least 30,000 more… that would be the minimum you would expect.


Indeed, Dr Villas-Silva said that the number of Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK might be as high as 200,000 when the new figures are released later this week. This compares with only 29,000 in 2007 when the two countries joined the European Union and only 112,000 in the first quarter of 2013.

 

 

Embarrassment for Prime Minister

If Dr Villas-Silva is right, then this will be a great embarrassment to the UK's Prime Minister David Cameron. It is also likely to result in an increase in electoral support for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) at the European Parliament elections which will be held on 22nd May. UKIP is a right-wing party which campaigns for the UK to leave the European Union.


The UK's population is, by-and-large, opposed to mass immigration. Polls consistently find that about 75% of the population think there has been too much immigration.


UKIP says that the UK should be able to control levels of immigration from any Country. EU citizens can live and work freely in the UK and in other EU Countries. If the UK left the EU, It could then, says UKIP leader Nigel Farage, stop EU immigration into the UK.

 

 

Conservatives tend to oppose immigration

Mr Cameron heads the right-wing Conservative Party and is prime minister at the head of a Coalition government which contains Conservatives and members of the centrist Liberal Democrats. The Conservative Party is, traditionally, the main stream party for those who oppose immigration but Mr Cameron does not want the UK to leave the EU. He is therefore in a difficult position.


Mr Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010 after the Conservatives became the biggest single party after the general election in that year. During the election campaign, Mr Cameron promised to reduce net annual immigration to the UK from the level at the time; about 250,000 a year, to 'tens of thousands' a year.


Critics said that this promise was impossible for Mr Cameron to keep because the UK is a member of the EU which guarantees the 'free movement of labour' between member states.

 

 

Changes to immigration system

Mr Cameron's government has introduced numerous changes to the system to cut immigration from outside the EU. It has;

• Abolished the Tier 1 (Post Study Work) visa. This allowed foreign graduates of UK universities to stay in the UK and work for two years after graduation for any employer (including self-employment)
• Abolished the Tier 1 (General) visa which allowed 'highly skilled people' (mainly graduates) from around the world to live and work in the UK. They were able to work for any employer (including self-employment). The government said that many Tier 1 (General) holders worked in low-paid occupations.
• Introduced a cap of 20,700 on the Tier 2 (General) visa for skilled workers. The Home Office has also introduced stringent requirements for applicants making it time-consuming and expensive to apply for these visas. It is for this reason that in reality the cap is never reached
• Removed the licences from 700 colleges which effectively prevents them from sponsoring foreign students from outside the EU for Tier 4 student visas
• Prevented UK citizens and permanent residents who earn less than £18,600 a year from bringing foreign born spouses to live in the UK.

Critics of the Coalition's immigration policy say that these policies have been extremely damaging to the UK's economy. They did have the effect of reducing net immigration at first. By September 2013, net immigration was down to 150,000 per year. But, since then, immigration has been climbing up again. This is because of increased immigration from within the EU.

 

 

Southern Europeans

Many of the EU migrants have come from southern Europe where many countries are still in recession. Figures show that the numbers of arrivals from Portugal, Italy and Greece have risen. Others have come from eastern Europe where, on the whole, rates of pay are considerably lower than in the UK.


Consequently, the last official figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics showed that net immigration rose in the year to December 2013 to 212,000, up 60,000 on the previous figure.


This is likely to drive even more traditional Conservatives to register a protest vote by voting for UKIP.

 

 

UKIP predictions

UKIP warned that many new Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants would arrive in the UK when restrictions were lifted in January 2014. This may very well have turned out to be incorrect. However, the Migration Observatory predicts that the new figures will show that there has been a significant increase in immigration from these two Countries since January 2013.


It seems that the bulk of the immigrants arrived in 2013 before restrictions were lifted. This will be bad news for Mr Cameron.


Although the two countries joined the EU in 2007, the UK, along with most other western EU countries, put 'transitional controls' in place which put restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians living and working in the UK. The transitional controls lasted seven years and expired after 31st December 2013.

 

 

Bulgarians' and Romanians' work restrictions

Until then, only the following categories of Bulgarians and Romanians were allowed to work in the UK

• Self employed
• Highly skilled migrants with job offers under the work permit scheme (or who scored sufficient points under the High Skilled Migrant Program rules)
• Agricultural workers

On 1st January, journalists waited at UK airports many expecting large numbers of immigrants to arrive. This did not happen. What appears to have happened is that immigrants from the two Countries actually arrived before then.


Global Visa Support offers a variety of programs in United Kingdom. Please visit our UK page for more information: http://www.globalvisasupport.com/uk.html

US IT lobby group calls for action on H-1B visa reform

Compete America, a body which lobbies on behalf of high-tech industries in the US, has called on the US Congress to pass legislation to increase the number of H-1B visas available to US industry.


Scott Corley, the chief executive of Compete America, has written an opinion piece for the Washington political newspaper Roll Call to raise awareness of 'the H-1B visa crisis'. Mr Corley says that the US economy would have been creating an additional new job every 43 seconds if the H-1B system had been reformed.


The H-1B visa allows US employers to employ skilled foreign workers in 'specialty occupations'.


There are currently 85,000 H-1B visas available annually. 65,000 go to workers with bachelor's degrees (or 'degree equivalence' where a worker has a high level of skills gained from a mixture of experience and training). A further 20,000 can be issued to workers with higher degrees.

 

 

H-1B visas last three years but can be renewed

Most H-1B visas last for an initial three year period. They can be renewed once to a maximum of six years.


While in the US, H-1B visa holders can, if they meet the requirements, apply for permanent residence visas (or 'green cards', as they are known). Where an H-1B visa holder has applied for a green card, his/her H-1B visa can be renewed while his/her green card application is pending. This can sometimes take many years.


Demand for H-1Bs is extremely high and the number of applications received far outstripping the number of visas available each year. This year, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting applications on 1st April.

 

 

170,000 applications within five days

Within five working days, it had received over 170,000 applications and held two lotteries to distribute the available visas among the applicants.


Mr Corley quoted research from Dr Matthew Slaughter, an economist from Dartmouth College, a highly-regarded university in New Hampshire, to support his position. Dr Slaughter's research suggests that 'for every immigrant hired at an American company, another four employees are added as well'.


Mr Corley adds 'High-skilled scientists and engineers create so much innovation and work that additional jobs must be created to complement and support their efforts' and continues 'Other studies have indicated that number of additional jobs created by each high-skilled immigrant could be as high as 7.5'.

 

 

Failed H-1B reform bills

There have been several bills before Congress in the last few years to increase the number of H-1B visas available. Unfortunately none of them were passed by both Houses of Congress as is required by the US Constitution and so the number of visas remains the same. Among the bills that failed to pass are

• The SKILLS Act 2013 which would have increased the H-1B caps to 155,000 for bachelor's degree/degree equivalence visas and 40,000 for those with higher degrees. The SKILLS Act was voted out by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee in June 2013
• The Immigration Innovation Act 2013 which would have immediately increased the number of H-1B visas to 115,000. In times of high demand the number of visas available annually would rise as high as 300,000. The bill failed to attract sufficient support.
• The Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act 2013 which would have immediately raised the number of H-1Bs available to 150,000. This figure could have risen to 200,000 in times of high demand. This bill was passed by the Democrat-controlled Senate in June 2013 but the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has not yet been allowed to vote on it by the Republican speaker of the House, who decides what bills come before the House.

 

 

 

Split in immigration reform?

Mr Corley's call for urgent reform of the H-1B system has led some immigration activists to fear that the US high-tech industry could be about to split from the campaign for comprehensive reform of the entire system.


The Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act 2013 (The Border Security Act) was drafted by a bipartisan group of eight senators (four Democrats and four Republicans). It was intended to reform every area of the US immigration system which both parties accept is 'broken'.
 

If it ever becomes law it will

• Create a 'pathway to citizenship' for most of the estimated 11.5m illegal residents immigrants. They would have to pay a $500 fine, learn English and pay back taxes
• Increase the annual number of H-1B temporary skilled work visas' from 85,000 to over 150,000. This figure could rise above 200,000 in times of high demand.
• Allow graduates from US universities with higher degrees to apply for green cards on graduation. There would be no cap on applications.
• Increase spending on border security by $4.5bn over the next four years

 

 

Comprehensive reform

Politicians from both parties have called for comprehensive reform. High profile Republican, Jeb Bush said that he opposed the Immigration Innovation Act in 2013 because he believed that the entire system should be comprehensive reformed.


But many Republicans object to the creation of a 'pathway to citizenship' for illegal immigrants which they say will encourage further illegal immigration and will disadvantage legal immigrants who would have to wait longer for their chance to become American residents.


Consequently, some Republican Representatives in the House of Representatives have made it clear that they will never vote for the Border Security Act.

 

 

Difficult choice

This leaves business organisations wanting reform of the employment-based immigration system with a difficult choice to make.


Up until now, many business groups, such as FWD.us, founded by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, have pushed for comprehensive reform, including a pathway to citizenship for illegal residents.

But, they may calculate that it is in their interests to lobby for a piece-by-piece approach which would see the reform of the H-1B system occurring quickly.

 

 

Concern among campaigners

This possibility is causing concern among immigration reform campaigners.


Senator Dick Durbin, one of the authors of the Border Security Act, is reported to have said 'I am troubled by recent statements suggesting that some in the technology industry may shift their focus to passage of stand-alone legislation that would only resolve the industry's concerns.


'This 'divide and conquer' approach destroys the delicate political balance achieved in our bipartisan bill'.

 

 

We are not abandoning comprehensive reform

Mr Corley has told journalists 'in no one way are we abandoning comprehensive reform'.


Nonetheless, his article has raised concerns among many campaigners for illegal immigrants' rights.


The worry is that high tech businesses may in future concentrate only on reforms that are of benefit to them. If this happens there will be less funding and likely less political support for comprehensive immigration reform.


Global Visa Support offers a variety of programs in United States. Please visit our USA page for more information: http://www.globalvisasupport.com/usa.html

Demand for H-1B visas up by 40% in 2014, says US immigration

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has revealed that it received 172,000 applications for H-1B visas in the first five working days of April this year, 40% more than over the same period last year. It has since held ballots to allocate the H-1B visa quota. It will now notify all the chosen applicants whose applications can be considered further for an H-1B visa.


Only 85,000 H-1B visas can be issued annually; 65,000 to those with bachelor's degrees or with experience, or a combination of experience and qualifications, which is considered to be 'degree equivalence' and 20,000 to those with higher degrees such as masters degrees and doctorates.


It is specified in US immigration law that USCIS should accept H-1B applications from 1st of April each year for at least five days. Where the quotas have been reached during that five day period, USCIS then holds a ballot, or ballots if both quotas have been exceeded, to distribute the available visas.

 

 

Demand up by 40% on last year

This year, the quotas were greatly exceeded and two ballots have been held. Applications of unlucky applicants have been discarded. Demand was up on last year, 2013, by 40%. Last year, USCIS received 124,000 applications over the same period.

Five firms took 33% of H1B visas

Analysis of last year's applications carried out by Professor Ron Hira of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York shows that five outsourcing firms received about one third of all H-1Bs issued and ten outsourcing companies received over half of all H-1Bs.


The top five firms, Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Infosys and Accenture received about 35,000 of the 85,000 visas available leading to claims that the system is no longer working as it should.


The International Business Times reports Neeraj Gupta of the US tech firm Systems in Motion as saying 'What the visa was intended to do was to allow us to get great engineers from India, the Philippines, the Ukraine, or wherever, for our innovation economy.

 

 

Outsourcing firms

Instead these large outsourcing firms are bringing in lower paid testers and programmers are taking up so many of the visas'.


A spokesman for Cognizant said 'We create and support thousands of American jobs, including 7,000 U.S. workers hired locally over the past two years and a commitment to hire at least 10,000 more locally over the next three years'.


Global Visa Support offers a variety of programs in United States. Please check our USA page for more information: http://www.globalvisasupport.com/usa.html

Canada's immigration minister gives glimpse of new investor scheme

Chris Alexander, Canada's immigration minister says that Canada will announce details of an 'immigration investor venture capital pilot' scheme in 'a couple more months'. The visa will allow foreign nationals to gain Canadian permanent residence visas if they start up businesses in Canada.


Mr Alexander said that applicants would need to invest 'more than twice the amount' that was required under the previous Immigrant Investor Program (IIP). He also said the investment would need to be made for a longer period than under the IIP.


Mr Alexander made headlines in China in February when he announced that the IIP would be closed with immediate effect. At the time of his announcement, there were some 25,000 applications outstanding.

 

 

45,000 people lost visa chance when IIP closed

Because each successful IIP applicant was allowed to apply for permanent residence visas for his/her spouse and dependent children, it is believed that some 65,000 people lost the chance of moving to Canada. Of these, it is believed, some 45,000 were from China.


Mr Alexander was interviewed by Hong Kong paper, the South China Morning Post during a trip to Hong Kong in late March. He was initially asked why the IIP had been scrapped.
 

Mr Alexander said that there were four main reasons

• The program 'wasn't meeting its objectives'
• Many successful applicants who were issued with Canadian permanent residence visas under the IIP failed to move to Canada. This meant that the results of the program 'weren't good compared to our other economic immigration programs'
• The 'investment' that IIP applicants were required to make 'wasn't really an investment. It was a loan, strictly speaking, to the government of Canada'. He continued 'the amount was small [and] the investment performance was weak'
• There was a lengthy backlog which meant that applicants had to wait for a minimum of six years to have their applications processed. Some applicants had to wait for as long as a decade.

 

 

'Soft loans from absentees'

Mr Alexander summed up the reasons for the IIP's axing by saying that the program was meant to be an immigrant investor program but 'instead we were getting soft loans from absentees'.


He said that those applicants whose applications had been terminated when the IIP was closed would also be able to apply under the new 'immigrant investor venture capital pilot' the details of which would be announced in 'a couple more months'.


He said that the new scheme would require 'a venture capital investment'. He said 'We're essentially going to say to investors, "In return for permanent residence, in return for the opportunity to do business with status from Canada, we're taking your money for a good long time to help create jobs, growth, opportunity in Canada and for global businesses, we hope, through venture capital-focused that will be managed in Canada, and privately managed, not managed by the government'.

 

 

New scheme

As Mr Alexander said, the formal announcement will be made later this year. At this point, the full details of the scheme will become clear. However, Mr Alexander did reveal the following details:

• The minimum investment will be higher than under the IIP. Under the IIP, applicants were required to invest CAN$800,000. Mr Alexander said that, under the new scheme, the amount would be 'more than twice' that amount
• The sum invested will have to be invested for longer than under the IIP. IIP applicants had to 'invest' their money for a five year period. Mr Alexander said that he was still consulting on the details of the new scheme but said 'I think it will be more than the kind of duration we've seen up until now'
• The investment will be a genuine investment and not a loan. He said that applicants would have to make a 'larger investment in an at-risk project focused on the start-up side of the venture capital spectrum'
• Language and residency requirements would 'probably not [be] terribly stringent'. Mr Alexander said that the ability to speak English or French was a useful tool for immigrants in Canada but said 'we respect the fact that not everyone starts from the same point of departure and we give a lot of English second-language support to those who don't have a very high level when they arrive'
• The initial pilot scheme will require applicants to invest in a venture capital fund which will be managed by Canadian venture capitalists.
• Investors will not initially have any choice about what schemes their investment is invested in. Mr Alexander said 'Under the pilot, [the money invested] will go into a single fund, so they won't have choice. But in subsequent offerings of the pilot and when we turn it into a programme, we will certainly listen to the advice and the feedback from all of these immigrants.

Global Visa Support offers a variety of programs in Canada. Please visit our Canadian page for more information: http://www.globalvisasupport.com/canada.html

 

UK parties debate independent Scotland's immigration policy

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.


In November 2013, the Scottish National Party (SNP), which, as the name suggests, supports Scottish independence, published a white paper titled Scotland's Future: Your Guide to an Independent Future.


The paper was 670 pages long and was described by the SNP leader Alex Salmond as 'the most comprehensive blueprint for an independent country ever published'.

 

 

Fewer migrants in Scotland

In it, the SNP said that an independent Scotland would introduce a much higher level of immigration than the rest of the UK. This, Mr Salmond said, was because Scotland has different needs. This is, in part because most immigrants to the UK settle in southern England.


Only a small number make it to Scotland. Therefore, Scotland has not in the past benefitted as much from immigrant skilled labour as other parts of the UK and need more skilled immigrants now. Many Scottish citizens too leave Scotland for England and other Countries so further reducing the number of skilled workers in the Scottish labour market.


The SNP would, it says, introduce 'a points-based immigration system targeted at particular Scottish needs'. It has said that it would increase the level of immigration into Scotland to help deal with a rapidly ageing population and a future pensions gap.

 

 

Immigration controls between England and Scotland

This has led ministers in the current UK government to warn that there would have to be immigration controls between Ireland and England and an independent Scotland if its immigration policy was radically different from that of the rest of the UK and Ireland.


This is because the government of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, and many other EU Countries including Ireland, would still be pursuing a restrictive immigration policy after Scottish independence.


Immigrants could gain visas from Scotland and then come and live in what would be left of the UK.


As a result, they warn, the UK would have to introduce border controls along the Scottish border. There will likely be a similar situation in a number of other EU Countries.

 

 

SNP 'must come clean' on immigration

Recently, the shadow Home Secretary, Labour's Yvette Cooper, said that the SNP must 'come clean' on immigration. Ms Cooper gave a speech in Inverness, the city of her birth, on Thursday 24th April 2014, in which she said that Scotland would need over 1m new immigrants by 2050 to deal with its pensions gap.


Scotland's current population is only 4m. Polling shows that only 2% of those support the idea of increased immigration to Scotland.


Ms Cooper said 'All the evidence shows that there has to be a significant pensions gap in Scotland and that it has to be funded. If that isn't done as part of the UK, where the risks are shared, then it would have to be done by raising taxes, cutting pensions or raising immigration to meet the bill.

 

 

SNP 'not clear' on level of immigration proposed

She continued 'The SNP has said it would mean higher immigration for Scotland but haven't said just what that means. It wouldn't be possible to meet the needs of pensions in the future with just more university students from abroad.


'We all think more students would contribute to our economy but Scotland would need looser immigration controls and more low-skilled immigrants. That has consequences in terms of the pressure on public services and schools and the pressure on them'.


Ms Cooper was asked by journalists if increased immigration in Scotland would lead to border controls being introduced. She said 'Immigration policy has consequences for border controls of course but we simply don't know what the SNP immigration policy would be'.

 

 

Scotland 'could not use pound'

Senior politicians in Westminster have been seeking to show that an independent Scotland could not introduce the policies that the SNP has promised. Earlier in 2014, senior politicians from all parties at Westminster warned that an independent Scotland could not use the British pound after independence.


In 2013, the UK's Coalition government passed a bill which allowed a referendum on independence to be held in Scotland. It has recently emerged that the Coalition allowed this to happen because it was confident of a convincing victory.


However, this appears to have been a political blunder by Prime Minister David Cameron. Support for the 'yes' to independence campaign has been growing steadily.

 

 

Support for independence growing

The 'Better Together' campaign which supports the status quo is still ahead but the lead has been narrowing. The 'no' vote currently has about 50% support and the yes vote has about 40% with one poll showing it at 43%.


Global Visa Support offers a variety of programs in United Kingdom. Please check our UK page for more information: http://www.globalvisasupport.com/uk.html