In the US the White House has been scheduled to hold an important meeting on immigration reform, but this has yet to go ahead due to various setbacks. The meeting was due to discuss the implementation of President Obama’s changes to immigration policy. It has been predicted that his administration has not estimated the time it will take to develop a realistic strategy to amend the current immigration laws.

However, the majority of experts and analysts are confident that Obama’s immigration reform will be put into action, and it could lead to changes in US immigration policies that will affect prospective candidates from the UK. Currently the US visa regulations are considered quite strict in comparison to most English-speaking countries.

The August bulletin released by the US Department of State has publicised changes to the EB-2 and EB-3 categories for employment-based permanent residence visas. Currently countries in the EU fall under the EB-1 category, and although this has remained unaffected, deadlines have been brought forward for applications in the EB-2 category. More countries were expected to be added to the EB-3 visa, but this has yet to materialise.

These visas are usually offered to people that have made outstanding contributions in their field, or managers and executive-level employees of multi-national companies. In June, 2009 it was revealed that employment-based fourth and fifth preference numbers were higher than expected. When this statement was released, demand for the EB-1 visa was high, but the allocated numbers were yet to be affected.