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Melbourne, Beleaguered Australian universities have come together to plead for easing of visa restrictions for students from India and China. The two most populous countries in the world provide the vast bulk of international students to Australia. There has been a significant drop in students from India putting many self-funded Australian universities and other higher education providers in deep financial crisis.

Though the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) recently eased the visa norms for India and 37 other countries, a body representing Australian universities want more relaxations to save the third largest export of the country.

There has been a call to revamp the Assessment Level system which decides the key requirements like financials and English Language requirements for the international students interested in Australian education. Currently, students from India and China are classified under Assessment Level 3 and 4. The visa requirements become stringent as the level goes up.

“Broadly, the extraordinary burden placed on high quality university students from Assessment Level 3 and 4 countries, particularly in terms of financial proof, is critically prohibitive to the ongoing sustainability of the international education industry,” Universities Australia (UA) said in a submission to the Knight Review of Student Visa Program. The submission suggests varied Assessment Levels within countries like China and India.

The need for selective Assessment Levels has been made as “in India and China if high rates of fraud and non-compliance exist in Punjab and Fujian respectively, then they should attract a much higher assessment level compared to other regions within those large countries”, UA argued in the submission to the review body. The Universities Australia has blamed “Commonwealth” agencies for not acting in time to prevent fraudulent practices even though “the triple digit growth in 572 visas from Nepal and India (Punjab) was very obvious” in 2009-10. The subclass 572 visas were granted to students enrolled in vocational courses like hairdressing and cookery.

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Georgian Foreign Ministry welcomes the U.S. decision to extend the visa term for Georgian citizens. Given the visa-free regime that Georgia has established for United States citizens, based on the agreement reached at a meeting of a working group under the U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership Charter, the U.S. government has decided on a maximum extension of the visa term for certain categories of Georgian citizens, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said.

The maximum visa term for tourist and business visas (B1/B2) and transit (C1/D) visas will increase from the current 12 months, multiple entry, to 120 months, multiple entry and in the A, F, G, H, J, L, M, O, P, Q, R categories – from the current 12 months to 60 months; in the B, C, D categories – from the current 12 months to 120 months.

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Georgia introduces a visa-free regime for citizens of Albania, Iraq, Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. As the Parliamentary Secretary of the government Gia Khuroshvili told Trend, citizens of these countries will be eligible for visa-free stay in Georgia for 360 days.

According to the Georgian government, the introduction of the visa-free regime will facilitate the inflow of foreign investments in the country and tourism development. Earlier, Georgia introduced a visa-free regime for citizens of the United States and European Union states. The bill was considered by ministers at yesterday’s governmental meeting, and will be submitted to parliament for approval in the next few days.

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The government will issue a visa exclusively for foreigners marrying Koreans, from as early as the latter half of this year, as part of efforts to boost its immigration efficiency and help foreign spouses better settle down here. The plan comes as the Ministry of Justice Friday unveiled changes in the nation’s immigration law, saying it will submit a revised bill to the National Assembly for approval in the near future with an aim of making the changes take effect in the second half of this year.

A new F-6 visa will be issued to foreigners who come here to marry Koreans in a bid to better help a growing number of migrant wives, mostly from China and Southeast Asian countries, adapt to the new living environment and deal with legal and other issues here. Currently, they receive an F-2 visa just as other foreigners who wish to stay here for longer than 90 days.

The country has seen a rapid increase in the number of foreigners coming to marry Koreans over the past few years. The number was estimated to exceed 140,000 nationwide as of the end of 2010. “It is difficult to implement policies specifically directed to “marriage immigrants” because there are many types of long-term foreign residents under the current F-2 visa regime. We expect the introduction of a separate visa for foreign spouses will help us provide timely and more tailored-made policy assistance,” a ministry official said.

Foreigners whose Korean husbands or wives have died or gone missing will also be eligible for the visa. Additionally, foreign retail investors bringing in more than $500,000 here will be given the F-2 visa, while those who invest over $300,000 and hire at least two Korean employees will also be given the same status. Currently, only foreigners employed by a company investing
over $500,000 here are given the right to stay for the long term.

In a bid to secure talented human resources, the government also plans to make foreigners holding Ph.D. degrees eligible for the F-2 visa. Now, only those who have Ph.D.s and are employed by domestic companies are issued with the visa.

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A Russian visa center will open in Helsinki in the coming days and there will be three more – in Turku, Lappeenranta and Mariehamn – all scheduled to open next month.

The centers will make things easier for Finns applying for Russian visas. But they will only accept documents, while decision-making on visas will remain the prerogative of diplomatic missions.

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The Executive Yuan passed a draft amendment Thursday that simplifies the process for foreigners seeking residency in Taiwan in an attempt to attract foreign talent into the country. A new article was added that stipulates that if a foreigner enters Taiwan on a “four-in-one” employment pass, which incorporates a visa, work permit, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit, he or she will not be required to apply for an ARC again with the National Immigration Agency (NIA) upon arrival in Taiwan.

The ARC is the identification card issued to foreign residents in Taiwan. Under current regulations, a foreign professional who wishes to work in Taiwan has to apply for a work permit from the Council of Labor Affairs and a resident visa from a Taiwan embassy or representative office overseas before applying for an ARC from the NIA within 15 days of arrival in the country.

As Taiwan is expected to enter a zero population growth era from 2022, an important issue for the government to consider when formulating its immigration policy in the future is how it can attract foreign talent to make up for a shortage of homegrown talent resulting from a decline in the country’s fertility rate, said Premier Wu Den-yih.

Wu said the most important job for the government at present is to allow more non-resident foreigners to enter the country, relax restrictions on the residence rights of overseas-born children of Taiwanese nationals, simplify the process for foreigners applying for residency, and strengthen the management of international marriage brokers.

According to the draft amendment, overseas-born children of Taiwanese nationals can now apply for residence or settlement in Taiwan at any age. Previous regulations stipulated that only those over the age of 20 are eligible to file for application.

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A Redwood City, Calif., man was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison and three years of supervised release following his conviction by a federal jury for conspiracy, impersonating a federal officer and attempted extortion.

Frank Salvador Solorza’s sentencing came after a jury found him guilty of attempting to extort money from six individuals while posing as a federal immigration officer. The case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). The jury also found that the 46-year-old had engaged in a conspiracy with others to commit these crimes.

Evidence at trial showed Solorza conspired with others to send letters purporting to be from a government immigration agency. The letters were directed to six individuals. The letters demanded money — $50,000 in total — to clear up the immigration status of each individual. The letters threatened jail and deportation of each individual if the money was not paid.

After receiving the letters, the victims contacted ICE HSI, which immediately opened an investigation. The evidence at trial showed the defendant and others also called the individuals after delivery of the letters and continued to claim to be officials from a government immigration agency and to demand money. During these calls, the defendant and others designated a time and location for the victims to pay the money. The defendant was arrested by HSI agents when he arrived at the designated location at the designated time and attempted to collect the money. When arrested, the defendant was wearing a clown suit as a disguise and riding a child’s bicycle.

“The prison term in this case is absolutely appropriate,” said Shane Folden, special agent in charge for ICE HSI in San Francisco. “Regrettably, schemes like this involving the impersonation of federal officers potentially undermine the public’s confidence in their government and law enforcement. HSI will continue to aggressively pursue those who exploit innocent individuals for their own enrichment.”
Solorza was originally indicted by a federal grand jury in February 2009. In October 2009, the grand jury returned a superseding indictment accusing him of one count of conspiracy, two counts of impersonating a federal officer, and two counts of attempted extortion by a federal official.

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Elvira Sosa left Mexico for the United States more than 30 years ago, but last year was the first time she’d been counted as part of the U.S. Census.

Sosa was among thousands of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles who filled out a census form last year, and city officials said the response, especially among Latinos, might have saved the area money and congressional representation.

The increased count was purposeful: A Census Bureau outreach program urged undocumented workers to fill out the census and assured them that nothing on the form could be used against them.

The program included Spanish call centers that would field questions about the census, plus billboards, bus advertisements and fliers with information. Celebrities publicized the census, too.

The response: The 2010 census showed that the numbers of Latinos living in this country increased by 43%, from 35 million to more than 50 million, during the past 10 years.

Read more….

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It’s an age where almost every country is tightening its borders and increasing security in order to keep out unwanted elements and terrorist activities – after the recent spate of destruction on a mass scale, many more visa restrictions are in place. So if you’ve secured a visa to the USA as a tourist, a student, a non-immigrant worker, or in any other non-immigrant category, you must be careful not to abuse the privileges you’ve been given. There are consequences to overstaying your visa, and they’re harsh and could have a severe effect on the rest of your life; so before you’re trapped by visa regulations because of your lack of awareness or your overconfidence, here’s how you can set out to minimize your US visa troubles.

• Know the visa rules of the country you’re traveling to – the rules are different for each country and each type of visa. If you’re not sure, ask a few people who are knowledgeable about these issues, like visa lawyers or others who are professionally linked to immigration offices.

• Do not overstay your visa by even a few hours – you may assume that it’s ok, but it’s actually not. You will have to face severe consequences by overstaying your visa, for whatever reason.

• If you need to overstay your visa or desire a change in the status of your application, file for an extension well in advance. Even if your application is pending, you could have to leave the US for your home country and return when your visa has been approved. Check with an experienced visa lawyer about the rules regarding extension of stay and change in status of visa.

• If you have overstayed your visa for any period of time, you could not be allowed back into the country for as many as 10 years. Check with your visa lawyer to see what consequences you could be facing and how to negate them if you’ve overstayed your visa.

• If you overstay your visa, your application may not be considered favorably even if you apply for a visa after serving your three or ten year ban.

• Don’t violate the terms of your visa – if you are not permitted to work, then don’t do so; if you are not permitted to study, then don’t do so – violating the terms of your visa too could get you deported and bring about a ban on future visa applications.

• Remember, even if you hold a valid visa, the country you are trying to visit could still refuse you right of entry at the immigration point if they find that your answers are not satisfactory. So know what you must do and say in order to honor your visa and be a respected guest in the USA.

By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Chris Jacobson who writes on the topic of Criminal Justice Degrees . Chris can be reached at his email id: chris.jacobson7-AT-gmail-Dot-com

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From time to time we accepts guest articles for our popular Blog, this time Lior Levin from City-Immigration in New York provides great Tips on the usage of MacBooks in the Immigration practice for lawyers.

Lawyers using Macbooks in their practices can benefit in many ways from the release of several useful software programs. The majority are specifically designed to increase productivity and make life a little easier for the busy attorney.

Here is an overview of some of the best attorney-specific software programs available for Mac users. We specifically tried them all at City-Immigration :

Law Stream

Law Stream is an excellent law office management software package. It’s specifically designed to assist attorneys who need a little help managing contacts, schedules, to-do lists, meetings and deadlines. The program also allows lawyers to simplify and streamline finances with features that include tracking money coming into and going out of the practice, as well as accurately recording time spend with various clients.

However, it’s the ease of being able to quickly manage contacts that makes this software so good. It allows attorneys to record information regarding that client, such as phone numbers, email addresses and other contact information, plus it records any work completed on any projects for that particular client. The software also has the ability to run reports on which clients are producing the most work and most revenue for the practice.

TrialSmart

TrialSmart is a legal application that facilitates trial presentations. This software is ideal for lawyers wanting to analyze, review, edit and present legal transcripts. Lawyers are also able to add documents, video footage and exhibits to the transcripts for later presentation. It’s possible to import other transcripts into the software to be annotated. This allows for fast generation of reports.

TrialSmart is ideal for running reports that can be exported and saved to various other program formats, such as Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, or Microsoft Excel. Other features include a PDF text search function, group reports and saved layering. Any attorney wanting to build a case quickly and effectively can benefit from this software.

MacSpeech Dictate Legal

Speech recognition software like MacSpeech Dictate legal is ideal for dictating notes into your computer that is automatically converted into text format. This particular software was specifically designed for the legal field, which means it can easily recognize more than 30,000 legal terms, phrases and words without misinterpreting the words you’ve spoken. Add to this the ability of the software to ‘learn’ new words that it doesn’t recognize and you have a powerful piece of software. Simply train new words into the Vocabulary Editor and it will remember them for future use the next time you dictate something into the software.

The software boasts a 99% accuracy rate, so you know your text will end up error free and without spelling mistakes. MacSpeech Dictate Legal alleviates laborious typing time and makes it much easier to dictate items of importance easily and quickly.

3D Timeline

The 3D Timeline software is the ideal tool for any lawyer who wants to ensure that all details of a case are presented clearly and in context by using interactive timelines. The software generates a 3D perspective of the given chain of events that includes the addition of photos, notes, files or even web pages. This gives an attorney a unique opportunity to build a case story that highlights all details and aspects of that case to highlight the truth without being misunderstood or misinterpreted.