The Home Office has awarded Sopra Steria a £91m contract to develop a digital visa and immigration service in the UK. The French outsourcer will take on the contract in October 2018 – the latest in a raft of recently signed deals intended to cope with processing immigration status post-Brexit, particularly for the 3 million EU …

Thousands of skilled workers – including IT specialists and engineers – have been refused visas this year due to the British government's much-maligned immigration cap. According to figures released today, more than 6,000 Tier 2 (General) visa applications by people who had job offers from companies in the UK were refused …

The UK government has partially backed down from ordering the NHS to hand over patients' personal details to the Home Office so it can track down illegal immigrants. The decision to force NHS Digital cough up non-clinical records came under fire from privacy and civil liberties campaigners, doctors, and Members of Parliament, …

Comment Is there a lesson for politicians around the apparent destruction of disembarkation cards of citizens from Caribbean nations who arrived in the UK after the Second World War? Perhaps. But it goes something like this: it's a bad idea for the Home Office to make it difficult for legal immigrants to prove their status. It's an …

Exclusive The UK Home Office will sign a deal with Accenture to replace its clunky 1990s-era immigration and asylum applications system – having previously written off £347m in its last attempted overhaul. The department confirmed procurements have been awarded to Accenture and PA Consulting as "caseworking delivery partners" to replace …

Campaigners have welcomed reports that the UK government is planning to cease monitoring pupils' nationality in its mass school data slurp. The school census, a statutory survey that takes place three times a year, collects a range of information about students, including country of origin and nationality. Civil rights and …

The US Department of State wants to ask visa applicants to provide details on the social media accounts they've used in the past five years, as well as telephone numbers, email addresses, and international travel during this period. The plan, if approved by the Office of Management and Budget, will expand the vetting regime …

President Trump’s immigration policies are costing the United States technology jobs, rather than their intended effect of growing them, according to Bill Wagner, the CEO of LogMeIn. Speaking to The Register in Sydney, Australia, today, Wagner said his company had hoped to bring in more workers, some on H-1B visas. He now …

Forty industry bodies have called on UK government to rethink its cap on skilled workers' visas, which has been reached for the last three months running. Skilled non-European workers wishing to work in the UK must enter through the Tier 2 (General) Visa route, which is used for most hires in the science and tech sectors, as …

The UK government's plan to excuse itself from having to hand over information about the data it holds on immigrants has received short shrift from MPs. In the first debate on the Data Protection Bill in the House of Commons on Monday evening – the draft text having been passed by the Lords in January – MPs lambasted an …

The United States Department of Homeland Security's Citizenship and Immigration Services has released new and strict rules for H-1B visas, the permit used by many-a-tech-company to bring skilled workers to the USA from abroad. President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to restrict use of the visas, which he claimed are …

Following President Donald Trump's demands for a crackdown on H-1B visas, there has been a radical shift in how US immigration officials handle applications for the program. Every year, Uncle Sam allocates 65,000 H-1B visas for highly skilled foreigners keen to work in the Land of the Free™, with an additional 20,000 reserved …

The UK health service's NHS Digital has been accused of operating to a "lower standard of confidentiality" than rest of NHS, in a heated hearing about a deal that requires patient info to be handed over for immigration enforcement. The agreement means that patient record-keeper NHS Digital can be required to hand over non- …

A gang of venture capital firms and startup funds has asked the Trump administration to save an immigration rule that allows foreign startup founders to come to the US in order to build their companies. Exactly 60 companies and organizations on Thursday signed a letter [PDF] asking the President to scrap plans to rescind the …

Having decided to move on from healthcare, the Trump administration has backed proposed legislation that would markedly overhaul America's immigration process. The H-1B visa system – which tech bosses rely on to fly in foreigners to swell office ranks – isn't explicitly mentioned in the Reforming American Immigration for a …

US president Donald Trump's America First slogan has been extended to StartupLand after the Department of Homeland Security announced a delay to the implementation of the International Entrepreneur Rule, aka the “Startup visa”. The Rule was due to come into effect next week and would have allowed entrepreneurs with stateside …

The quantity of non-EU IT workers coming to the UK to fill local skills gaps swelled to a new high of 36,015 in 2016. That is way up on the 23,960 recorded in 2012, according to Home Office stats on the number of work permits issued. SJD Accountancy, which crunched the data, claimed that with Brexit likely to restrict access …

Through the end of November, individuals seeking a visa to travel to the US may be asked to provide usernames for social media accounts going back five years, subject to the discretion of consular officials. Following a two-week period for public comment in early May, US Department of State (DoS) has adopted a supplemental …