The United States Department of Homeland Security has announced that British travelers will be charged a fee related to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA.

As of the 9th of September, British visitors will have to pay US$14 to apply to ESTA. This fee is used to promote tourism to the United States as well as to cover processing fees.

While the application can take as many as 72 hours to be approved, the online system usually hands out approvals within minutes.

The ESTA visa is a web-based program that allows the United States government to review applications before the person boards a plane headed for the United States. Approval must be given to the person at least three days before they leave, and is mandatory for all countries that are listed under the Visa Waiver Program. An ESTA approval allows visitors to come to the United States, but is not a visa itself and does not guarantee a person will be able to enter. ESTA approvals are valid for two years and for multiple entries into the United States, but each trip can only be 90 days long in duration. There is no minimum requirement for time between trips.

Even though most ESTA approvals last two years, visitors to the United States must get a new ESTA approval if they have gotten a new passport, have changed their name or gender, changed their country of citizenship or have been convicted of a crime or developed a contagious disease.

Because an improperly filled out or erroneous ESTA application can result in a traveler not being able to travel to the United States and can severely impact travel plans, it’s make sure your documents are in complete order before making the trip.

The new immigration law that critics say encourages racial profiling and criminalizes immigration has had several parts blocked by a United States judge, just at the last minute before it was scheduled to come into effect yesterday.

The law is known as SB 1070 or the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighbourhoods Act and is internationally known as the “Arizona Immigration Law“.

As originally written, the law gives the power to law enforcement officers to stop anyone on sight and ask for proof of immigration status without adequate cause, meaning if a person “looks” foreign-born, they could be targeted.

However, the United States judge blocked the following provisions:

- Police officers are allowed to look into the immigration status of someone who is arrested or detained without a warrant on just suspicion of the person being illegal.

- Immigrants must carry their proof of status with them at all times and it would be illegal for them to look for jobs in public places if they had no status.

The second provision is aimed at day labourers and tradespeople, who are known to congregate outside of stores like Home Depot looking for people who may need help with their construction projects as a way to make money – sometimes, the only way in which they can make money.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who signed the Act into law in late April, said yesterday that she would be filing an appeal to reinstate the law as it was written. She said, “The fight is far from over, at the end of what is certain to be a long legal struggle, Arizona will prevail in its right to protect our citizens.”

Yesterday, KTLA news’ television broadcast showed dozens of protesters disrupting a major downtown Los Angeles intersection by laying down chained together in the street to block traffic. The protest was peaceful, but by mid-afternoon police cut the chains and made the protesters disperse. Many more protests had been planned, including blocking access to federal offices, but the ruling came just as police were getting prepared to begin enforcing the new law.

The  Obama administration officially took legal action against the Arizona immigration law that unfairly targets minorities
living in the state.

The government filed a lawsuit that said the influx of charges against harmless people who do not have United States Visas would  create massive backlogs in their immigration enforcement system, which is reserved for dealing with people “who pose a danger to the national security and a risk to public safety,” such as violent criminals and drug traffickers.

We had previously blogged about the law, which President Obama initially called misguided. It has drawn criticism from around the world, been called racist because it gives police officers and other law enforcement agencies the power to ask anyone for proof of citizenship or visas on sight. It’s assumed that this law will be targeting anyone suspected to be illegal without cause, especially anyone of Mexican or Latin American descent.

Obama has yet to publicly acknowledge or make a statement about the  lawsuit, however members of his administration have said that the
federal government, not the state government, is the government that needs to deal with immigration issues, because having states each with different laws will only create problems.

The law is set to take effect on July 28th unless a hearing set for July 22nd provides enough reasons to block it.

Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney as well as United States Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano met last week to discuss border security, immigration in Canada and fast-tracking travel and business between the two countries.

The two signed a Terms of Reference for the Visa Policy Working Group, which would allow for information sharing and inter-country consulting about visas for both countries and traveler screening and admissibility. The Visa Policy Working Group has long been underway, but but the signing of the Terms of Reference formalizes it. “Canada’s longstanding geographic, economic and social ties with the United States are a source of strength for bough countries,” said Kenney. “By sharing information and working together we can redefine approaches to identifying and screening travelers to expedite the flow of individuals moving legitimately across our borders, while protecting against those who would threaten our shared peace and prosperity.”

The two also met around the same time last year, and discussed progress made on their collaboration on immigration issues as well as the screening, registration and identifying travelers since then. “The partnership between the United States and Canada is critical to promoting national security and economic growth in both of our nations,” said Secretary Napolitano, “Minister Kenney and I are committed to working together to develop and implement border security and immigration measures and standards that help ensure the safety and security of our citizens.”

What does this mean for our Clients applying for Visas to the  US and/or Canada?  Well in a nut shell, information pertaining to your Canadian or US Visas may be shared between the two countries. This means your Visa applications for either Canada or the US have to be prepared with this information sharing in mind so that your admission to either Canada or the US would not be negatively impacted. It is therefore even more critical to ensure your applications are properly prepared!

Worries that issues like greenhouse gas emissions and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster might take priority over immigration reform had been raised in recent months, however Obama publicly addressed the issue for the first time on Friday, July 2nd.

In his much-hyped address at the American University in Washington, he asked Congress to get to work on legislation that would help fix the United States’ current immigration system as well as provide a way for illegal residents to become United States citizens. An estimated 11 million people currently living in the United States are doing so illegally, but Obama said that deporting them all is not an option as many have been leading established lives for decades.

President Obama broadly described the details of his proposal to help fix the immigration system, saying the country needs a “practical, common sense approach”. His proposal also outlines a possible system to allow currently illegal residents in the United States to become legal citizens, which may involve them admitting to breaking the law, settling up on any taxes owed, paying fines and learning English while registering to become citizens. Obama said that measures such as this would be ones he supports, but it is up to Congress to come up with legislation.

While not described in detail, Obama has also said that immigration reform will not only address illegal immigration and illegal residents, but U.S. Visas and border security.

Critics have said that people living in the country illegally should have some kind of blanket amnesty, but Obama mentioned that would not be fair to the many people going the legal route to obtain citizenship and may create an even larger illegal immigration problem.

However, decisions and new legislation may not come soon enough, perhaps at least until the mid-term elections are over in November so that the politicians can protect their votes in anti-immigration areas.

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has released their “Strategic Priorities for Fiscal Years 2010-2014″ document, which details ICEs plans to “create a culture of employer compliance” in dealing with corporations and businesses who hire workers with none or expired US Work visas.

The plan promises aggressive criminal and civil enforcement against employers who hire workers without a visa knowingly, but the plan also intends to offer protection to these workers by enforcing action and criminal investigations against employers who abuse or exploit them.

Currently, the Department of Homeland Security has a program called E-Verify, which lets employers check a giant database for worker visas to see if they are valid and to see if a worker is eligible for employment in the United States. Only those who hire federal-contract employees are mandated to check it in most areas, but the new priorities list intends create a public support campaign for the companies that use it, as only a few states have made the use of the E-Verify program mandatory for all businesses. Otherwise, it’s voluntary.

More money will also be allocated to creating staff and tools to deport those who overstay their non-immigrant visas, which are the types given for business, education of medical purposes. Further, ICE is also planning on bringing criminal charges to those who lie on their visa applications by expanding their document fraud task forces.