Category: News

Professor Daniel Muijs, a senior figure in England’s education watchdog, has held posts in Southampton, Manchester, Newcastle and Warwick Universities.

Originally from Belgium, he has worked in the UK for more than 20 years.

The Home Office says he has not been “refused”, but more information needs to be supplied.

Prof Muijs, whose research work has helped to improve schools in England, has so far not been accepted by the application process for EU citizens wanting to continue living and working in the UK after Brexit.

‘Ridiculous’

“Have just found out my application for settled status in UK has been rejected. I now need to find evidence of residence since 2013. Not a good feeling,” Prof Muijs wrote on Twitter.

• Universities warn of damage of no-deal Brexit
• Universities’ dual nationality plan for post-Brexit funding
• Should I stay or should I go now? EU academics face decisions

Tom Bennett, the government’s adviser on behaviour in school, replied: “How ridiculous and distressing for you. I’m ashamed you’ve had to go through this process.”

David Weston, an expert adviser to the Department for Education and head of the Teacher Development Trust, described it as an “embarrassment”.

The European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt said on Twitter that the difficulties faced by Prof Muijs were “unacceptable”.

Prof Muijs has been a longstanding expert on education in the UK, having previously held professorships in the University of Southampton, University of Manchester and University of Newcastle and worked as a senior lecturer at the University of Warwick.

He has served on expert bodies and advisory groups and is the co-editor of an education research journal.

Prof Muijs says he has been in full-time employment in the UK for more than 20 years, including for the government’s own education watchdog, which he says would be apparent from National Insurance records.

But he says the application system told him there was insufficient evidence to approve the application.

‘Not refused’

The Home Office says that Prof Muijs has not been turned down, but the automated checking process has not had the information needed for an approval, and that he should get in touch for further clarification.

“This case has not been refused. We would encourage the applicant to make contact with the Settlement Resolution Centre, who will be able to assist him with his application,” said a Home Office spokesman.

“Over a quarter of a million EU citizens have already successfully been granted status under the EU Settlement Scheme and we received over 50,000 applications in the opening weekend,” said the spokesman.

The Home Office says it does not need to know how long someone has been resident, only whether it is more or less than five years – and the “automatic checks against government data” are a way of simplifying the process.

In tests before the system went live, the Home Office says almost eight in 10 applications did not need to provide any further evidence of residence.

About 17% of academic staff in UK universities are from the EU – almost 36,000 people – with concerns raised by university leaders that the end of freedom of movement could make it harder to recruit from the EU.

Source: bbc.com
Published: 8 April 2019

Political gridlock and years of Brexit drama haven’t dampened demand from wealthy Chinese for U.K. investor visas.

Chinese applications for Tier 1 investor visas rose 19 percent to 144 in 2018 from a year earlier, according to data obtained from the Home Office by private equity firm Growthdeck. The number applying has almost doubled since 2016, when the U.K. voted to leave the European Union.

Chinese comprised 63 percent of the 228 applications last year, up from half in 2017, according to Growthdeck. Hong Kong was second with 26.

The Home Office announced in early December it was temporarily suspending the visas to implement changes designed to tackle money laundering and organized crime. Less than a week later, it said it hadn’t imposed the freeze, without explaining why.

“All applications are considered on their individual merits,” a Home Office spokesman said in an emailed statement. “The Tier 1 route has been reformed to better protect the U.K. from illegally obtained funds and ensure only genuine and law-abiding investors can secure visas.”

Far from dissuading wealthy Chinese migrants, the uncertainty may have encouraged applications.

“During this period, we saw a near fourfold increase in account applications,” said Farzin Yazdi, head of the investor visa offering at Shard Capital, which says it has helped with about a third of all petitions.

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said last year that the government was reviewing the program after Labour Party lawmaker Yvette Cooper questioned the origin of money from 700 Russians granted the visas. The number of applicants fell sharply in 2015 after the government introduced anti-money-laundering checks and doubled the minimum investment for the permit to 2 million pounds ($2.6 million).

Since its December U-turn, the U.K. introduced changes last month that require applicants to prove that they’ve had control of the required 2 million pounds for at least two years, rather than 90 days under current rules, or provide evidence of the source of those funds. Investment in U.K. gilts are excluded from the plan.

The data show that applications from Russians fell by half to 24 in 2018. The U.K. has long been an appealing jurisdiction for ultra-rich Russians as a safe and stable place to do business, hold their wealth and educate their children — so much so that London has been nicknamed Londongrad.

Appeal Fading

The decline is the latest sign that such appeal may be fading after the government crackdown following the poisoning of a former Russian double-agent and his daughter last year on British soil. May retaliated by expelling dozens of suspected spies. Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich was among those caught up in the tension, with the British government declining to renew his visa. He has since received Israeli citizenship.

The U.K. remains an attractive haven for other nationalities. The slump in sterling has made U.K. assets cheap and other areas of the country’s economy offer attractive investment opportunities, according to Samuel Hu, head of overseas investors at Growthdeck.

Government-backed immigration programs are common in other parts of the world. The U.S. offers EB-5 visas that let immigrants who create jobs stay permanently. Portugal has a golden visa program that allows foreign individuals to buy property valued at 500,000 euros ($561,000) or more in return for residency.

Source: bloomberg.com
Published: 8 April 2019

If anyone can stir Japanese national pride at the moment, it is Naomi Osaka.

The world’s No. 1-ranked player in women’s tennis, Ms. Osaka is among the biggest stars in Japan, splashed across television programs and advertisements for Nissan cars and Citizen watches. As a mixed-race person, she has also helped prompt a discussion about how Japanese see their country.

But a looming deadline — Ms. Osaka’s 22nd birthday in October — has raised the question of whether she can continue to represent Japan on the international tennis circuit, where she has given the country bragging rights on the world sports stage.

Ms. Osaka, whose mother is Japanese and father is Haitian-American, has citizenship in both Japan and the United States. Under Japanese law, dual citizens must choose between the two nationalities by the time they turn 22.

That legal clause has left fans and commentators trying to guess whether Ms. Osaka will pick citizenship in Japan, the country of her birth, or the United States, where she has lived since she was a young child.

The choice facing Ms. Osaka comes as Japan is under pressure to loosen its entrenched insularity. Japan has long prized racial purity, seeing a largely homogeneous population as crucial to social cohesion. But with the country’s population declining and employers increasingly desperate for workers, its legislature passed a law in December to admit more guest workers, starting this month.

Ms. Osaka’s case, along with the new influx of foreigners, could exert new pressure on the government to begin to bring Japanese citizenship laws in line with those in the roughly three-quarters of countries, including the United States, that allow dual citizenship.

For now, though, Ms. Osaka has a decision to make. When asked by reporters which nationality she intended to choose, she responded with trademark feistiness.

“I’m pretty sure it’s obvious,” she said at a news conference following the China Open in October. “I’m playing for Japan. Not to be disrespectful or anything, but I don’t really get where the conclusion that it’s a hard choice for me or anything comes from.”

Still, it might be hard to imagine Ms. Osaka giving up her American citizenship to keep playing under the Japanese flag. And in reality, she may not have to. Legal experts say the Japanese government rarely enforces the law requiring citizens to choose between nationalities.

The Justice Ministry estimates that about 890,000 Japanese citizens may also hold foreign passports, and the government has never revoked Japanese citizenship from anyone who, like Ms. Osaka, was granted citizenship at birth. (Japanese citizens who voluntarily naturalize in another country automatically lose their Japanese citizenship.)

But some analysts warn that because of Ms. Osaka’s celebrity, it would be difficult for the government to quietly give her a pass on dual citizenship.

“I think for the government it is a problem if she openly carries on having two passports,” said Sachiko Horiguchi, associate professor of anthropology at Temple University’s Tokyo campus. “Because that means the public would know that the law isn’t really enforced. I don’t think the government wants to admit that or the public to know that.”

Three years ago, when Renho Murata, whose father is from Taiwan, ran as the first woman to lead the opposition Democratic Party, right-wing critics attacked her because she had not formally relinquished her Taiwanese citizenship.

Partly in response to the frenzy over Ms. Murata, Kimi Onoda, a member of Parliament from the governing Liberal Democratic Party who was born in the United States to an American father and a Japanese mother, formally renounced her American citizenship.

Ms. Osaka’s multicultural background has challenged Japan’s notions of national identity, and she has become the most prominent mixed-race and mixed-nationality figure in a country where only one in 50 children born each year has a foreign parent. Though she is not fluent in Japanese, she has captivated the country with her whimsical remarks to the news media, as well as her humility in victory.

Her parents decided when she was young that she and her sister, who also played, would represent Japan, partly because the American tennis federation showed them little attention.

Anticipating Ms. Osaka’s citizenship choice, Michio Ushioda, a former columnist for The Mainichi Shimbun, a daily newspaper, and a professor at Teikyo University in Tokyo, said on Twitter that Japan would fall into a national funk if she elected American citizenship over Japanese.

“The disappointment of the Japanese at that time would be great,” Mr. Ushioda wrote in a tweet that only select followers could view, even suggesting that Japan’s current administration would collapse if Ms. Osaka competed for the United States in the Olympics.

Under International Olympic Committee rules, competitors must be nationals of the countries they represent. Similarly, under International Tennis Federation rules, Ms. Osaka could not play for Japan if she gave up her Japanese citizenship.

Legal experts say Japanese law provides a loophole through which dual citizens can effectively retain both nationalities. The law requires only that a Japanese citizen “endeavor to renounce” foreign nationality, a phrase that can provide just enough wiggle room for citizens to hold on to an extra passport.

“Many people misunderstand the law and feel threatened that they have to choose a nationality,” said Yasuhiro Okuda, a law professor at Chuo University.

Source: nytimes.com
Published: 6 April 2019

Chinese investors led the so-called Golden Visa boom in Greece, where residence permits issued to non-E.U countries citizens grew 46 per cent last year. Other crisis-hit countries like Portugal and Spain have used the scheme for years to lure investors in a bid to stoke an economic recovery. Spending a minimum of 250,000 euros on a home in Greece secures a five-year renewable visa.

According to the latest data from the migration policy ministry published by the Kathimerini newspaper on Saturday, Chinese investors account for 58 per cent of the residence permits issued from 2013. Since the launch of the programme until the end of the first trimester of 2019, a total of 4,154 permits were issued. Of these 1,399 were handed out last year, up from 961 in 2017. Chinese investors have acquired 2,416 out of the 4,154 permits issued so far. Russian citizens came second with 428, followed by Turks.

The European Commission published a report earlier this year, urging members to curb the practice of granting golden visas and passports to foreign investors. It singled out Cyprus, Bulgaria and Malta for running schemes granting citizenship to foreign investors for anywhere between 500,000 euros (USD 570,000) and two million euros. The report said wealthy candidates for residency or citizenship do not face adequate security and background checks. The Greek government brought last month a bill to the Parliament, broadening the criteria of the Golden Visa programme. Non-EU nationals will now be granted a five-year residency permit provided that they invest at least 400,000 euros in Greek companies or if they buy Greek bonds through a Greek bank of the same value.

Source: financialexpress.com
Published: 6 April 2019

Hungary’s prime minister on Friday launched his party’s campaign for the European Parliamentary elections in May by presenting a seven-point plan against immigration.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban called for migration to be controlled by national governments, not European Union bureaucrats and repeated his view that no country should be forced to accept immigrants against its will.

Orban also urged the EU to stop funding civic groups that support asylum-seekers and said “no one in Europe should suffer discrimination” because they are Christians.

“At stake is whether the EU will have pro-immigration or anti-immigration leaders,” Orban told a gathering of Fidesz members and supporters. “We will decide whether to defend our Christian European culture or yield the terrain to multiculturalism.”

Last month, the membership of Orban’s Fidesz party in the largest bloc in the European Parliament, the center-right European People’s Party, was suspended while Orban’s policies are scrutinized by an EPP delegation. Some members of the alliance believe Orban has strayed too far from its Christian Democratic values.

In Orban’s assessment, the People’s Party is “turning left, in a liberal direction and … toward a Europe of immigrants.”

If that is the turn the EPP makes, “you can be sure we won’t follow,” Orban said.

Despite calls by EPP faction leader Manfred Weber for Orban to cease his attacks on the EU, the Hungarian leader lashed out again at EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who is also part of the EPP, saying he was “firmly responsible” for Britain’s Brexit morass and “the migrant invasion.”

“There is a bubble in Brussels, the virtual world of the privileged European elite, which has become detached from reality,” Orban said, often interrupted by applause from the audience. “Hungarians … want the European Union, but have had enough of how things are going in Brussels and they want change.”

Orban built fences to stop the flow of migrants in late 2015 and his extreme anti-immigrant policies have won him admiration on Europe’s far-right and last year helped him win his third straight four-year term in Hungary.

All EU nations will hold national votes for lawmakers for the European Parliament from May 23-26. Hungary’s vote is May 26.

Source: washingtonpost.com
Published: 5 April 2019

It could take the US government up to two years to identify potentially thousands of children who were separated from their parents by the authorities at the southern border, the government said in a court filing.

The filing late on Friday outlined for the first time the Trump administration’s plan for identifying which family members might have been separated by assessing thousands of records using data analysis, statistical science and manual review.

Last month, a federal judge in San Diego expanded the number of migrant families the government may be required to reunite as part of a class-action lawsuit brought last year by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The Office of Inspector General at the US Department of Health and Human Services said earlier this year it had identified many more children in addition to the 2,737 initially included in the suit. The US district court judge Dana Sabraw had already ordered those children be reunited with their parents.

“Defendants estimate that identifying all possible children … would take at least 12 months, and possibly up to 24 months,” the government wrote in Friday’s filing.

It added that the time frame would be affected by the efficacy of its predictive statistical model, the manpower it can dedicate to the manual review and any follow-up meetings required.

In a statement on Saturday, the ACLU lead attorney for the case, Lee Gelernt, said the group strongly opposed the government’s proposed plan and accused it of not treating the separations with the necessary urgency.

“The government was able to quickly gather resources to tear these children away from their families and now they need to gather the resources to fix the damage,” Gelernt said.

Donald Trump’s administration implemented a “zero-tolerance” policy to criminally prosecute and jail all illegal border crossers, even those traveling with their children, leading to a wave of separations last year.

The policy sparked outrage when it became public, and the backlash led Trump to sign an executive order reversing course on 20 June 2018.

Source: theguardian.com
Published: 6 April 2019

The expansion of Saint Lucia’s Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP) could very well become a concern of the United States Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

This much was gleaned from the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report Volume II Money Laundering of March 2019 on Saint Lucia, now in the hands of the State Department.

The report, which can be found on the State Department’s website, states that Saint Lucia is generally in technical compliance with international standards, however, “U.S. law enforcement is increasingly concerned about the expansion of citizenship by investment programs due to the possibility of local corruption and the visa-free travel and ability to open bank accounts accorded these individuals.”

The report then went on to explore Saint Lucia’s CIP by stating that “an individual can petition for St. Lucian citizenship through a minimum donation to the National Economic Fund of U.S. $100,000 per applicant, U.S. $165,000 for an applicant and spouse, or U.S. $190,000 for a family of up to four people.”

Further that “other citizenship by investment options include a U.S. $300,000 minimum purchase in real estate; a U.S. $3.5 million investment for an individual, or U.S. $6 million for more than one applicant, in an approved enterprise project; or a government bond minimum purchase of U.S. $500,000 for an individual, U.S. $535,000 for an applicant and spouse, or U.S. $550,000 for a family of up to four people.”

According to the report, applicants must apply through a government-approved local agent because in-person interviews are not required. Applicants must make a source of funds declaration and provide evidence supporting the declaration.

The report, under the sub-head ‘Vulnerabilities and Money Laundering Methodologies’, noted drug trafficking as the primary source of illicit funds in the country and that its geographic location and porous borders increase its risk of drug money laundering.

“Money laundering most commonly occurs through structured deposits and currency exchanges, or cash real estate transactions. Saint Lucia identifies jewellery dealers, legal services, and non-profit organizations as additional sectors vulnerable to money laundering activity. There is one FTZ operating in Vieux Fort,” stated the report.

The report claims that there remains a substantial black market for smuggled goods in Saint Lucia, mostly gold, silver, and other jewellery, predominantly smuggled from Guyana.

“There is a black market in high quality jewellery purchased from duty free establishments in St. Lucia by both local and foreign consumers. Monies suspected as derived from drug trafficking and other illicit enterprises are filtered into and washed through trading firms. Trade-based money laundering is evident in St. Lucia,” stated the report.

The report notes that from 2017 to 2018, Saint Lucia charged 12 people with money laundering. For 2018, there were six cash forfeitures totalling approximately U.S. $565,050 (1,527,068 Eastern Caribbean dollars). Saint Lucia reports increased interagency cooperation, leading to an increase in the number of cash seizures and forfeitures and that further anti-money laundering and combating financing of terrorism awareness training is recommended to continue developing anti-money laundering compliance.

The report notes that Saint Lucia’s main sources of revenue are tourism and the offshore banking sector and that the country is progressing with its anti-money laundering regime.

“As of October 2018, the St. Lucia Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA), the offshore sector supervisor, listed the following regulated entities on its website: 26 insurance companies, 17 credit unions, 14 international banks, 33 international insurance companies, and five Money Service Businesses,” the report stated.

It listed Saint Lucia’s main anti-money laundering laws as thus: The 2003 Money Laundering Prevention Act, the Proceeds of Crime Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Saint Lucia has what is known as Know-Your-Customer and Suspicious Transaction Report regulations. It also has enhanced due diligence for politically exposed persons, noted the report.

According to the report the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank regulates onshore commercial banks in Saint Lucia and there is a Mutual Lega Assistance Treaty between the governments of Saint Lucia and the United States.

Source: loopslu.com
Published: 2 April 2019

The minimum Comprehensive Ranking System score edged down by a point to 451 as Canada immigration authorities conducted a new Express Entry draw.

Invitations to Apply were issued to 3,350 candidates in the draw, which took place on April 3, 2019.

The draw saw a tie-breaking rule cut-off of January 9, 2019 at just before 3.35am EST. If more than one candidate had the lowest score, the cut-off is based on the date and time they submitted their Express Entry profiles.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has now issued ITAs to 24,550 candidates in 2019, against a high-skilled immigration intake target of 81,400.

Canada’s immigration ministry broke the record for annual Express Entry ITAs in 2018 with 89,800.

This was the seventh round of invitations under Express Entry in 2019 and 114^th overall.

What is Express Entry?

Express Entry is an immigration system implemented by Canadian immigration authorities (IRCC) on January 1, 2015 which manages skilled worker applications under Federal Economic programs. This includes the Federal Skilled Worker Program, the Federal Skilled Trades Program the Canada Experience Class and parts of the Provincial Nomination Programs.

Stakeholders expect to see near 30 draws and more than 80,000 invitations issued in 2019, with a majority of draws featuring CRS scores below 460 to enable Canadian immigration authorities to meet targeted annual immigration levels for 2019.

Source: immigration.ca
Published: 3 April 2019