International and Bilateral Issues

Amidst pending comprehensive immigration reform, the United States has proposed several steps, including changes in the F-1 and H-1B visas, to attract foreign skilled workforce, a move likely to benefit professionals from countries such as India.
Prominent among the reforms include providing work authorisation for spouses of certain H-1B visa holders, 17-month extension of optional practical training (OPT) for F-1 international students to include students with a prior degree in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, allow for additional part-time study for spouses of F-1 students and allow outstanding professors and researchers to present a broader scope of evidence of academic achievement.
Together these actions would help attract new businesses and new investment to the U.S. and ensure that the U.S. has the most skilled workforce in the world.

Non-European Union immigrants wishing to settle in Britain would need to earn more than what most Briton do under a new “selectivity” policy aimed at attracting only those who can “add to the quality of life in Britain”.
Those who wanted to settle in Britain may be required to have a salary of between £31,000 and £49,000 a year. Most Britons earn less than £25,000 a year.
Also proposed to set a minimum income level for a British citizen seeking to bring in a foreign spouse. The government's Migration Advisory Committee (Mac) had recommended an annual income of between £18,600 and £25,700.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said the raising the income-level for immigrants wanting to bring in a foreign spouse would be a “hammer blow to the human rights of cross-border partners and their families”.
- They've already been hit with language requirements and ever increasing visa fees.
- One might argue that this government has it in for poor people who fall in love with anyone who's not resident in the U.K.
Claiming that immigrants were taking away British jobs, Mr. Green said that, according to a Mac report, there were up to 23 fewer jobs for British workers for every additional 100 working migrants coming from outside the European Union.
It disproved the “old assumption” that “as immigration adds to GDP it is economically a good thing, and that therefore logically the more immigration the better, whatever the social consequences”.

Kuwait's Islamist-led opposition has won a landslide majority in the country's snap polls
No women were elected, with the four women MPs of the previous Parliament all losing their seats.
Voters punished pro-government MPs, reducing them to a small minority, especially 13 former MPs who were questioned by the public prosecutor over corruption charges.
Minority Shias who form about 30 per cent of the native population saw their representation reduced to seven MPs from nine, with four of them from Islamist groups.
The snap polls were held after the ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state dissolved Parliament following youth-led protests and after bitter disputes between the opposition MPs and the government.
OPEC member Kuwait has been rocked by a series of political crises over the past six years, leading to the resignation of seven governments and dissolution of Parliament on four occasions.