INDEPENDENT TRAVELS

INDEPENDENT TRAVELS Independent Travels was established to provide the public with friendly, honest and accurate legal advice on immigration and travel matters.

Independent Travels has a particular expertise in Immigration laws, Nationality & Asylum, and Human Rights law. The firm enjoys a prolific and excellent reputation as a Travel specialist with an excellent success. Our expertise in Immigration Law is vast, having advised and acted for clients in matters, ranging from individuals to multi-national companies. Whatever your immigration needs is, you c

an be sure our immigration experts will provide you with personal, friendly and professional services. We offer our clients confidentiality, commitment and promise to deal with your matter with professionalism and integrity. We understand the need to provide you with affordable legal services as well as recognizing that your matter is as important to us, as it is to you.

01/07/2016

Welcome to the second half of the year, and may all you dreams and desires be accomplished. Happy new month from all of us at Independent Travels

Asylum and immigration court fees set to rise by over 500%The British Government has proposed a massive increase in the ...
17/05/2016

Asylum and immigration court fees set to rise by over 500%

The British Government has proposed a massive increase in the fees that immigrants and asylum seekers pay to have their immigration/asylum cases heard in court. This huge rise in fee (eg. from £140 to £800 for a hearing in court) will prevent individuals from being able to take their cases to court.

If the Home Office makes an incorrect decision on someone's case, this can usually be appealed in court. The fee increase will make people unable to challenge such decisions, leading to severe disruption in their personal/family lives.

Only rich people will be able to access courts, as the proposed amounts are impossible for most immigrants and asylum seekers to pay. This is absolutely ridiculous and unacceptable decision.

01/02/2016

We can help you Apply for Canada Permanent Residence Visa through (Express Entry) Program.

24/12/2015

We wish you all A Merry Christmas. May the Joys of the season, Fill your heart with goodwill and cheer. May the chimes of Christmas glory, add up more shine and spread smiles across the miles today & in the New Year.

04/09/2015

Migrant crisis: Britain set to accept more refugees

David Cameron is expected to announce plans later to increase the number of refugees being allowed into the UK.

The extra refugees are expected to come from UN camps bordering Syria, and not from among people already in Europe.

No specific figure has been agreed, but Mr Cameron has previously said the UK would continue to take in "thousands".

BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Downing Street had found itself behind the curve amid public and media reaction to the humanitarian crisis.

The PM is likely to make an announcement in Madrid after talks with Spanish and Portuguese leaders that had been intended to cover Britain's proposals for EU reform.
'Deeply moved'

Calls for the UK to take in more refugees have intensified after the publication of a picture of the body of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, washed up a Turkish beach.

Mr Cameron said on Thursday that as a father he felt "deeply moved" by the image, but he has argued that taking on more people was not the simple answer.

But it now appears that his stance is shifting amid pressure from public and political figures, including:

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has written to Mr Cameron calling for the UK to accept more refugees
Former Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett said the UK should take in 25,000 over the next six months
A petition calling on the UK to accept more refugees has got more than three times the 100,000 signatures needed for it to be eligible for a possible debate in Parliament

Meanwhile, a stand-off between police and migrants on a train in Hungary is continuing into a second day.

On Thursday, police let the migrants board the train in Budapest but then tried to force them off at a refugee camp to the west of the capital.

The prime minister isn't changing his argument.

He still thinks opening up Europe's borders and agreeing quotas will not solve the refugee crisis. In fact, he thinks it would make it worse by increasing pull factors and encouraging people traffickers.

But, as the crisis gets worse and the public and political pressure grows, the prime minister does now accept that Britain has a moral duty to do more.

While on a visit to Portugal and Spain to discuss his planned EU reforms, Mr Cameron is expected to say that he is looking at extending existing British and UN schemes that have so far brought a few hundred of the most vulnerable Syrian refugees to the UK.

No targets have been agreed and none is likely to be set today - although Mr Cameron has talked of taking thousands more - but he is unlikely to satisfy his many critics who want Britain to take in tens of thousands of refugees and who have been outraged by his reluctance to act.

Almost 5,000 Syrians have been granted asylum in the last four years and the UK has accepted 216 Syrian refugees under a scheme to relocate the most vulnerable begun in January 2014.

It is expected that this relocation scheme will be extended to see thousands more refugees brought directly to the UK from camps in Syria and neighbouring countries.

The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said the prime minister would continue to make the argument that the problem also needs to be tackled at source.

Among those to add his voice to calls for the UK to do more is former Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who told BBC Newsnight that the UK needed to make "a very clear and conspicuous humanitarian gesture".

"I think 10,000 is a figure that we could handle," he said.

"It's a figure to which Britain would respond - the churches, the religious groups, the charities, would all join in, local civic groups.

But UKIP leader Nigel Farage warned the European Union was sending a message that anybody who wants to can come to Europe which, he said, would compound the crisis by encouraging more people to make the journey.

"If we want to stop images like that picture of that three-year-old boy being taken out of the sea then we have to stop the boats from coming. That is absolutely vital," he told LBC radio.
'Showing leadership'

Development charity Oxfam welcomed indications of a shift in UK government policy.

Chief executive Mark Goldring said: "Offering to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees would bring the UK in line with other European countries who have already shown leadership in offering a haven to vulnerable refugees."

Former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the UK should respond "in a positive way" to the crisis "and that must run into thousands of people being admitted to this country".

But he added that he had concerns, for Britain and any country taking people in, over "what signal that will send to those who are not in Europe at the moment".

He also said the obligation to help refugees should be considered by countries outside of Europe, pointing out that "very large numbers" went to areas such as the United States, Canada, South America and Australia following World War Two.

Source@BBC

25/08/2015

UK: Small businesses face stiffer penalties for hiring illegal migrants

The new Conservative government plans to come down really hard on small businesses that employ illegal migrants as well as the migrants themselves.

Under proposals to be included in the Immigration Bill to be presented in Parliament, takeaway restaurants and local convenience shops or locally known as off-licences could face losing their licence to operate if they are found to be employing illegal workers.

The government is also considering whether this provision should be widened to cover minicab operators and drivers, the BBC reports.

In addition, the legal defence for other businesses found using illegal workers will be amended to remove their ability to claim they did not know an employee was not allowed to work. Businesses will have to show that they carried out proper checks before employing staff.

The maximum sentence for employers found guilty of hiring illegal migrants will be raised from two to five years, in addition to the fines that are in place, the broadcaster said.

And that is not all. In an all encompassing change to the Immigration Bill, those who work illegally in England and Wales face up to six months in jail, as well as an unlimited fine and wages being seized.

This is the latest of a series of announcements made by the government to crack down on illegal migrants.

Immigration Minister James Brokenshire said: "Anyone who thinks the UK is a soft touch should be in no doubt - if you are here illegally, we will take action to stop you from working, renting a flat, opening a bank account or driving a car.

"As a one nation government we will continue to crack down on abuse and build an immigration system that works in the best interests of the British people and those who play by the rules," he said.

While Alp Mehmet from Migration Watch UK, which supports tougher immigration controls, welcomed the move, he said: "Let us hope that the authorities will not shy away from acting on the powers they are to be given, since their record on that front has not always been exemplary."

The BBC said immigration officers are reported to be preparing to mount a wave of raids this autumn targeting building sites, care homes and cleaning contractors.

18/08/2015

NHS Raises Concern for Nurses under Tier 2

There are concerns raised by NHS chiefs over changes to the UK Tier 2 immigration rules have been put forward in a letter sent to the Home Office. The Nursing Times states that many Tier 2 applications of nurses recruited from outside the European Union are being refused by the Home Office.

Additionally, some non-EU NHS nurses are known to be resigning as a consequence of new immigration rules, which would see them having to leave the country, if their yearly salary is less than £35,000 and they've been in Britain for six years.

Obtaining Tier 2 visas is getting increasingly difficult. It can be difficult to keep your Tier 2 sponsorship licence which the Home Office can revoke anytime. There have even been reports of the Home Office producing falsified documentation to support revocation of sponsorship licences held by employers. In addition, somewhat bizarrely, the OISC (Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner) appears to have become involved in the Governments attempts to reduce net immigration to the UK, which now even worsens the situation.

Nurses’ exclusion from the Shortage Occupation List leaves non-EU nurses coming under the general pool of Tier 2 visa applicants restricted to a total of 20,700 visas annually.
A clinical director at an NHS hospital in London revealed that nurses were already quitting their jobs and taking up employment opportunities in the private sector for increased salaries with hope that this will enable them to remain in the UK.

Clinical Directors statement highlights: "It's a massive blow to us. London relies on nurses with Tier 2 work permits to keep NHS operations running. It's really difficult to recruit nurses in the current climate because of high living costs in London. Our hospital has already lost two nurses in quick succession to the private sector as they seek to avoid the £35,000 salary threshold."
He also went onto say: "It will be disastrous if the government allows these rules to go through. Even rumours of the threshold will lead to nurses leaving the NHS out of fear."

NHS recruiters and individual NHS Trusts have warned the Department of Health and the Home Office that unless the immigration rules and the Tier 2 visa Shortage Occupation List are changed, the NHS will struggle to recruit nurses for vacant posts and face problems with nurses leaving employment to join private sector

18/08/2015

Student with four A* A-levels refused finance over immigration status

A student who was awarded four A* grades at A-level is facing an anxious wait to hear whether he will be able to take up an offer from Imperial College due to a dispute over his immigration status.
Hassan al-Sherbaz, 18, has been refused a student loan despite having lived in Britain for half his life. Sherbaz, who arrived in the UK with his parents aged nine, has been educated at primary and secondary schools in Milton Keynes.
When Sherbaz applied for student finance he was told his immigration status – of discretionary leave to remain – means he is not eligible for a loan. His status means he would have to pay the international tuition fee rate at £26,000 a year.
He now faces deferring his offer for two years while he applies for indefinite leave to remain status, which will make him eligible for student finance. Sherbaz said: “I feel like I will have lost time in comparison to my peers.”
Sherbaz said he remembers the day he was told his loan application had been refused. “It was a very big shock,” he said. “I was thinking what am I going to do and how am I going to afford this. But I was very motivated to prove myself that I can get through this.”
On Thursday Sherbaz celebrated four A*s in maths, further maths, physics and chemistry, meeting his offer to study chemical engineering at Imperial College London. Sherbaz dreams of a career in the oil industry. “I have a lot of ambitions in helping society and the environment.”
Sherbaz’s family relocated from Baghdad to Britain in 2006 so his father could take up a PhD. Sherbaz remembers the Iraqi capital as “very dangerous”. “There were killings in the street,” he says. “It was something that was part of our daily lives.”
Sherbaz has been offered hope by a recent supreme court decision that could pave the way for hundreds of people, like Sherbaz, who are settled in Britain and have been to school in this country to carry on to higher education. The supreme court found that the blanket exclusionary rulepreventing anyone except UK citizens or those with indefinite leave to remain in the UK from applying for student loans was disproportionate and could not be justified.
Rachel Knowles, a solicitor at Just for Kids Law, the charity who brought the case,known as Tigere v secretary of state for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis), said: “We are hopeful that the government will take account of the decision in Tigere and revise the guidance for all students in similar situations. We are very happy to work with the government on this.
“Since the judgment we have been contacted by a large number of young people in these situations. We will try to provide them with individual support to resolve their financing issues but we hope that soon the rules will change so that we won’t have to take each case individually.”
A Bis spokesperson said the government was considering the detail of the Tigere ruling.

Source@guardian

17/08/2015

US lacrosse coaches denied UK visas

Hundreds of thousands of young people are being denied the opportunity to learn lacrosse, after 78 coaches were refused UK visas, the sport’s governing body says.

English Lacrosse said that the coaches, from the US, had been turned down for visas to take part in a British scheme to bring lacrosse to an estimated 200,000 young people in schools and universities.

The group has been responsible for bringing around 1,250 lacrosse coaches from non-EU countries into the UK since 1982 to boost participation in the sport. Around 60 per cent of those who take up lacrosse are female.

But the coaching scheme has now been suspended by UK Visa and Immigration (UKVI), which said it broke visa criteria. English Lacrosse was given 20 days to respond to the decision.

In a statement, the organisation said: “Sport participation, particularly amongst females is a hot topic with the Government. Yet, our sport enabling coaching programme has been given just 20 days to close its doors. This decision has been taken with no option of support, or opportunity to challenge. Help us make some noise and draw attention to this situation.”

The group said it had been accused of operating as an employment business rather than a sporting governing body and that the coaches it was aiming to bring to the UK were not working at sufficiently high a standard to be classified as elite. I

The news comes after a recent change in the requirements for governing bodies was put in place by the Government, which reclassified English Lacrosse as an employment business. As such, it must meet different requirements when applying for visas.

Sue Redfern, English Lacrosse’s board chair, said the group was unaware it had broken any rules and would make changes to meet the new requirements.

11/08/2015

No in country appeal against EEA sham marriage removals says Upper Tribunal

In R (on the application of Bilal Ahmed) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (EEA/s 10 appeal rights: effect) IJR [2015] UKUT 436 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal concludes that there is no in country right of appeal where a non EEA foreign national marries an EEA national and applies for a residence card, the residence card application is refused on the basis that the marriage is a sham and the Home Office takes removal action against the non EEA national. The official headnote:

(1) The fact that P (who is not an EEA national) has a right of appeal under the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006 against an EEA decision to refuse P a residence card does not have the effect of precluding the Secretary of State from removing P under section 10 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.

(2) Section 92(4)(b) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (as it was before the changes made by the Immigration Act 2014) does not afford P an in-country right of appeal against the section 10 decision, where the issue of whether P is a member of the family of an EEA national is a matter of dispute.

(3) The factual issue of whether P is a family member falls to be determined by the First-tier Tribunal on appeal by P against the EEA decision and/or the section 10 decision, whether or not P may by then be outside the United Kingdom. A judicial review by P of the decision to remove and/or the setting of removal directions will not succeed where P’s application is based on marriage to an EEA national, if the Secretary of State reasonably suspects P of being a party to a marriage of convenience.

If this were to occur, the non EEA national were to suffer financial losses and the appeal were to succeed with the effect that the residence card is ultimately granted, the non EEA national would have a very good EU law damages claim against the Home Office.

20/07/2015

the US Visa Lottery may be returned to eligibility list as the list is modified every year based on trends of the previous five years within which they were removed.

Work restrictions on foreign students extended in visa fraud crackdownThousands of foreign students at publicly funded c...
13/07/2015

Work restrictions on foreign students extended in visa fraud crackdown

Thousands of foreign students at publicly funded colleges are to lose the right to work in Britain while they study, under a Home Office crackdown.

The immigration minister, James Brokenshire, announced on Monday that from next month students from outside the European Union who come to study at publicly funded further education colleges will lose the right to work for up to 10 hours a week.

The “new crackdown on visa fraud”, as the Home Office describes it, is aimed at ensuring that student visas are used for study and “not as a backdoor to the country’s job market”.

Further measures will be introduced this autumn, including:

Reducing the length of further education visas from three years to two.
Preventing college students from applying to stay on in Britain and work when they finish their course, unless they leave the country first.
Preventing further education students from extending their studies in Britain unless they are registered at an institution with a formal link to a university.

The number of foreign students at British further education colleges has slumped in recent years from a peak of more than 110,000 in 2011 to 18,297 in the last 12 months.

The fall is partly a result of a squeeze by the home secretary, Theresa May, in an attempt to reduce annual net migration to below 100,000.

Ministers say the fall is also a result of a drive to reduce visa fraud and close down hundreds of privately funded “bogus” colleges.

The latest changes extend restrictions on non-EU students at privately funded colleges to those at publicly funded colleges. It is thought that there are about 5,000 non-EU students at publicly funded colleges, many of them studying for A-levels before applying to British universities.
International students in the UK: who are they really?
Read more

Brokenshire said there had been signs of increased fraud at some publicly funded colleges and evidence of immigration advisers advertising college visas as a means to work in Britain.

“Immigration offenders want to sell illegal access to the UK jobs market, and there are plenty of people willing to buy,” he said. “Hardworking taxpayers who are helping to pay for publicly funded colleges expect them to be providing top-class education, not a backdoor to a British work visa.”

The Association of Colleges warned that the government’s crackdown risks seriously restricting Britain’s ability to attract international students.

“Preventing international FE students continuing to study in the UK after they have finished their studies will limit the progression of students from colleges to universities,” said its chief executive, Martin Doel .

“A-levels andinternational foundation year courses represent legitimate study routes for international students with many going on to successfully complete degrees at top-ranking universities. In blocking the route from further education to university, the government will do long-term harm to the UK as an international student destination and this policy needs urgent reconsideration.”

He added that the colleges had stringent monitoring systems to check attendance and were keen to see any evidence that they were being used as a backdoor for bogus students.

Address

4 Ezekiel Street, Off Toyin Street Ikeja
Lagos
23401

Opening Hours

Monday 08:00 - 18:00
Tuesday 08:00 - 18:00
Wednesday 08:00 - 18:00
Thursday 08:00 - 18:00
Friday 08:00 - 18:00

Telephone

+23480 2700 7002

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when INDEPENDENT TRAVELS posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category