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Dalai Lama: Praying for a travel visa

Not since he tried to get a South African visa has the Dalai Lama encountered such a furore.

The Tibetan spiritual leader is facing fresh opposition from China as he tries to secure a visitor visa for Taiwan. He is looking to make the trip to comfort survivors of typhoon Morakot which killed around 650 victims earlier this month.

In March this year, the Dalai Lama’s move to South Africa to attend a World Cup conference in Johannesburg was banned by the government. It was thought the ruling was in support of China’s opposition to him being in attendance. The decision forced archbishop Desmond Tutu to pull out of the meeting in protest and Nelson Mandela to join in the uproar.

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou has just approved the visit to Taiwan so it looks like the Tibetan will get his visa after all. He wasn’t able to get through South African immigration with such luck.

China correspondent Peter Foster from the Daily Telegraph wrote how “ fascinating” it would be to  to see “how far China is prepared to punish Taiwan”  over the decision.  How “fascinating” is China’s woeful record on political bullying and shocking human rights to the average Telegraph hack, I wonder?

For a man who spreads a lot of peace around the world, the Dalai Lama seems to encounter a lot of trouble securing a visa. Maybe it’s time he used a reputable travel visa consultancy?!

Win a prize with the British Council

Well, the nice people over at the British Council need your help and they’re offering some great prizes for anyone who can.

If you are a UK resident thinking about studying abroad then they want to learn all about your opinions, views and motivations as to why you’re considering studying for a qualification from another country.

The British Council have created a survey to gather this info. The results are confidential and should take about 15 minutes.

Fill in the survey by the 31 October this year and you could be the lucky winner of an Apple MacBook, Xbox 360, a signed Manchester United soccer shirt and other great prizes.

Your time and effort is appreciated and, who knows,  you may be one of the lucky ones who get their hands on one of the great prizes on offer. Sadly there’s no free student visa or tuition fees!

Immigrant visa correlates to braininess

A recent study by one of the world’s top business schools has found a good reason to apply for a visa – living abroad enhances creativity.

The research by INSEAD has proven that experience of living in a new culture outside of your own encourages adaptation, which results in enhanced problem solving abilities and increased artistic creativity.

One experiment involved using objects on a table to solve a problem; the other was about negotiating a price that was above the buyers maximum and below the sellers minimum.

Both experiments resulted in the conclusion that living abroad was related to creativity, but time spent travelling abroad did not matter.

William Maddux, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour at INSEAD, was the lead author of the study. Here are some comments he made about the findings:

This research may have something to say about the increasing impact of globalisation on the world, a fact that has been hammered home by the recent financial crisis. Knowing that experiences abroad are critical for creative output makes study abroad programs and job assignments in other countries that much more important, especially for people and companies that put a premium on creativity and innovation to stay competitive.

There’s a very strong, robust association between foreign language aptitude and creativity. So bi-lingual and tri-lingual people are more creative in general. And I think that the language is part of the adaptation.

So you can imagine a person who goes to live abroad for a year, but hangs out mostly with expatriates, maybe from their own country – that person is not going to derive the same kind of creative benefit as those who try to adapt themselves to a new culture, learn the language, learn the customs and get really involved in changing who they are and how they behave.

If you’re getting those cultural experiences at a young age, it’s going to have a stronger effect on subsequent creativity.

Women on a visa who work are happy

Aussie women work more than US women, a new study has revealed.

For the first time since records began, Australian woman have overtaken US women as the more likely nationality to be working.

In the past, US women were more likely to be employed than their Australian counterparts. Statistics, quoted from The Australian news site, state that a decade ago “gap was 7.2 percentage points in favour of the US, with 57.4 per cent of American women in jobs compared with just 50.2 per cent of Australian women.”

Recent initiatives to get mothers back to work earlier after childbirth has helped prompt Australia’s rise in female workers. In 2008, a report by the Productivity Commission showed one in six mothers are going back to work before their babies are even three months old.

So, congratulations to the historically work shy Sheila’s for finally getting their fingers out!

* * * * * * * *

Another new study has revealed that women who are living and working abroad on a work visa are happier than women who hold visas and play the ‘trailing spouse.’

The survey shows that 81% of women working overseas who were interviewed claimed to be happy, while only 24% of women without work could boast the same.

Just goes to show, that moving abroad on a work visa and mixing business with pleasure can be the ultimate recipe for satisfaction.

Join the latest Global Visas 'hot' debate

With strikes set to take place across Britain by UK immigration officials, travellers are looking at a holiday season that may descend into farce.  Are British Border bureaucrats the bugbear of travellers and UK visa seekers worldwide or do worse exist?

Who are the ultimate global offenders of immigration regulations gone mad?

Tell us your nightmare stories and join the debate to discover which country has the worst immigration staff.

Walking for US immigration joy

A Vietnamese  man is walking across the US to express his appreciation for his adopted country.

Sin Tho Nguyen  who lives in Fort Worth, Texas, is 1,000 miles into his ambitious journey and he aims to promote patriotism in the US. He has walked about 26 miles, or the length of a full marathon, every day since he left Atlantic Beach, Florida on June 10.

The 40-year-old meter reader has no fundraising or sponsorship goals for the 2,600 mile trek. His journey is simply his way of saying “thank you” to his chosen homeland for allowing him to live and work in the US.

“I owe to America so much, and I don’t have any talent at all,” says Nguyen. “I have two legs and a heart. So I decided to walk across America to give thanks to her.”

His journey is not without support. A Fort Worth co-worker trails behind Nguyen in a Ford Focus and the men sometimes sleep in the car at night. Fans also bring him money, food and encouraging words.

Nguyen’s father was a US soldier in Vietnam but father and son never met. In the footsteps of his late father, Nguyen applied for a US visa in 1992 and after a 60-day approval, enlisted in the National Guard and Army.

On his journey Nguyen carries a US flag and straps to his back a sign saying: “Shore to Shore: A Walk Across America to Honor Those Who Serve.”

He says: “This is about America, and it belongs to the troops and their family members. I am a messenger. I carry the flag. America is behind me now.”

Nguyen’s inspiring story paints a picture of an immigrant thriving in his chosen country.

Other famous immigrants who made the move to US and adapted successfully include Levi Strauss and Albert Einstein from Germany, Isaac Asimov from Russia, and Alexander Graham Bell from Scotland.

Which country packs the case for 'best tourist'?

A new study on tourism has revealed just who are the best and the worst recipients of a tourist visa.

The French – known for their haughty ways and tightness with money – were officially announced as the world’s worst tourists. They were closely followed by Spanish and Greek tourists.

The findings were taken from research conducted by TNS Infratest for the Expedia online travel agency. The poll, known as the Expedia Best Tourist Index,  has been running annually since 2002.

Top of the league were the Japanese. Their good manners and respect for cleanliness made them the most welcome visitors worldwide. Canadian tourists came second.

US tourists came first when it came to tipping and spending while abroad and tourists from UK came a surprise second in overall good behaviour and second best to the Italians in dress-sense.

The study asked over 4,500 hotels around the world to rank tourists from 27 countries based on nine measures from everything from spending habits to their willingness to try and speak the local language.

Luckily for many, getting a visa to move or work abroad depends on a more rigorous selection process.

A work visa can boost your brainpower

Don’t just take Global Visas’ word for it that living and working abroad is better for your mental health. A research project has proved there is actually a proven link between improved creativity and living abroad.

The study was conducted by two psychologists, William Maddux of INSEAD, a business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Adam Galinsky, of the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago. Their findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and a brief overview of their work is summarised below, in an article featured on the Economist.com website:

Maddux and Galinksky conducted two experiments to test their theory. The first, asked 155 American business students and 55 foreign ones studying in America with a test used by psychologists as a measure of creativity.

To check that they had not merely discovered that creative people are more likely to choose to live abroad, Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky identified and measured personality traits, such as openness to new experiences, that are known to predict creativity. They then used statistical controls to filter out such factors. Even after that had been done, the statistical relationship between living abroad and creativity remained, indicating that it is something from the experience of living in foreign parts that helps foster creativity.

Given a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, the students were asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall so that no wax would drip on the floor when the candle was lit. (The solution is to use the box as a candleholder and fix it to the wall with the pins.) They found 60% of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so, solved the problem, whereas only 42% of those who had not lived abroad did so.

A follow-up study with 72 Americans and 36 foreigners explored their creative negotiating skills. Pairs of students were asked to play the role of a seller of a petrol station who then needed to get a job and a buyer who would need to hire staff to run the business. The two were likely to reach an impasse because the buyer had been told he could not afford what the seller was told was his minimum price. Nevertheless, where both negotiators had lived abroad 70% struck a deal in which the seller was offered a management job at the petrol station in return for a lower asking price. When neither of the negotiators had lived abroad, none was able to reach a deal.

Given the importance of creativity to working practices and individual self-development and the relevance of multicultural experience in our increasingly globalised world, such research is of insignificance for anyone who makes the effort to obtain a work visa and live abroad, or for employers who recruit from an international pool of workers.

Policy Network hold UK immigration seminar

In these hard times with unemployment on the rise and uncertainty about actual and future levels of immigration, Policy Network held a conference in London this week (July 7) aimed at helping policy-makers through the politics of UK immigration in times of economic turbulence.

The international thinktank launched research by migration expert Professor John Salt and colleagues Janet Dobson and Alan Latham from UCL. The paper analyses the latest data on UK immigration trends, and evidence from across Europe on how past recessions have affected migration flows. It also casts doubt on the widely held assumption that migrants return home when unemployment rises thereby freeing up jobs for the non-migrant population. It concludes that:

•  Migration flows are likely to remain more stable than most people think over the course of the current economic downturn.
•  In the past three recessions that have affected UK, inflows began to pick up quickly, before a noticeable improvement in the country’s employment situation.
•  While immigration has tended to fall and out-migration rise when unemployment increases, this pattern only lasts for a limited period.

The Policy Network seminar comes on the heels of the controversial figures published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), which appeared to show that UK-born workers were losing jobs more quickly than non-UK born workers. This week’s research paper by Professor Salt and his team raises urgent questions about the direction of migration flows during a recession, the lessons that UK can learn from the experience of other European countries, and the type of policies that government should formulate to ensure that migration works to the benefit of the economic recovery.

Accompanying the paper, a comment piece by Elena Jurado, head of research at Policy Network, highlights the need for policy-makers to take into account the implications of changing migration flows for the future of the UK economy. She argues that “migrant who work in the UK are not only here to stay, they have also become an indispensable part of the UK economy. Accepting this reality and ensuring that they are incorporated into the government’s economic recovery strategy will form an essential part of its success.”

The paper was launched and discussed at a seminar entitled “Tracking migration trends in Europe during recession and recovery”.

This event is part of a Policy Network project on “Managing migration in times of economic turbulence: charting a progressive policy response”, kindly supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust. The project aims to develop concrete policy proposals and political narratives that will help progressive governments and political parties navigate through the politics of migration in times of economic recession.

Policy Network is an international thinktank dedicated to promoting progressive policies and the renewal of social democracy. Policy Network facilitates the sharing of ideas and experiences among politicians, policymakers and experts on the centre-left.