BritCits

India warns over UK plan to make visitors pay £3,000 bond.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23044324

Indian business leaders have criticised plans to make visitors pay a £3,000 "security bond" to enter the UK.

The idea, to be piloted from November, is aimed at deterring people from "high risk" countries staying in the UK once their short-term visas expire.

Nick Clegg forces rethink on visa bond plan :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/25/nick-clegg-visa-bond-theresa-may
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Family visit appeals abolished and bonds introduced.

http://www.freemovement.org.uk/2013/06/25/family-visit-appeals-and-bonds

As of today the full right of appeal against refusal of a visit visa sponsored by a family member in the UK has been abolished. Combined with the recently announced pilot of £3,000 ‘bonds’ payable for visitors to the UK, it is clear the Government is making it increasingly difficult for visitors from certain countries, principally in south east Asia and Africa, to visit relatives here in the UK.

The Government’s view of family visit appeals is that they are needless and that a simple re-application with the right documents will be sufficient where there is a genuine case. Anyone who thinks this clearly has not spent a lot of time reading Entry Clearance Officer family visit refusals from posts such as Accra, Islamabad, Manila, Delhi or Lagos. ECOs regularly refuse visas for the most absurd reasons and once a person has been refused once it is a matter of routine to refuse future applications.

The full right of appeal against decisions made from today onwards may have been scrapped, but an appeal can still be pursued on human rights or race discrimination grounds. Given that the Home Office has long argued that family visits are a perfectly good family life alternative to residence in the same country, it may be hard for officials to argue now that family life is not engaged where a child wishes to visit a parent or a parent a child, whether the child is adult or not.
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Dozens attend launch of Waltham Forest Migrant Action Group.

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/10504034.Dozens_attend_launch_of_Waltham_Forest_Migrant_Action_Group/

“New rules require that people wishing to bring a spouse, partner or child to the UK from outside the EU must earn at least £18,600 per year. That’s higher than the income of almost half the UK working population.”
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Hollie McNish has become an internet sensation with her brilliant poem Mathematics which debunks the arguments over immigration and economics - forcefully, beautifully and brutally.

http://www.jcwi.org.uk/blog/2013/06/24/british-national-breakfast
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Young Conservatives planning something horrible.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/young-conservatives-planning-something-horrible-2013062573449