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Quite a number of changes to New Zealand immigration policy became effective on July 30th. Both the residence programs and the temporary programs are affected. Overall it is easier to gain bonus points under skilled migration. However bonus points have been removed from one category under skilled migration. Recognized qualifications for an applicant and for an applicant's partner, study in New Zealand, and work experience are all worth more points. Also, more points are now earned with fewer years of work experience in-country. There is now an increased salary requirement for new Work-to-Residency applicants, and the Expression of Interest will now apply only to the principal applicant. The Refugee Family Support Category will replace the previous Refugee Family Quota system, with new Tier 1 registration applications being accepted from November 12th. Temporary entry options have been changed to now allow Bulgarians and Romanians the same consideration as...

Figures from the United Kingdom's National Insurance bureau show that immigrants do not abuse Britain's welfare system. For 2006, only 2.4% of all immigrants made a claim for unemployment benefits. The Conservatives are proposing annual limits on immigration and reacted to the report by stating that they believe the figures show the government is soft on immigration. Immigrants contribute about ?2.5 billion to the UK treasury annually.

Britain's Electronic Borders program has received a ?1.2 billion earmark to fund its activities. Also called the e-Borders Program, airlines and ferry companies must submit detailed passenger and crew information prior to departure from or arrival to the UK. A persons name, sex, date of birth, nationality, type of travel document and the date of issue are among the required data currently collected. The Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) has just completed the trial phase of the program. 29 million passengers were...

A report by the British Parliament's joint Commons and Lords Human Rights Committee was published on 10 August 2007 which severely criticized retrospective changes applied to the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme from December of 2006. The report concludes that retrospectivly applying rules changes to immigrants attempting to renew their existing HSMP visas is in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The Home Office minister, Vernon Coaker, rejected the criticism, saying that "most" highly skilled migrants will be allowed to remain in the UK under the new rules. In a BBC interview, he stated that "some people" using HSMP visas are not, in fact, working in highly skilled positions and that it is "right and proper" that "the integrity of the scheme is maintained." Criticism of the retrospective application of changes to the HSMP visa was unusually blunt, with the Chairman of the...

Dean Morgan, the workpermit.com General Manager for the UK, was interviewed in a major BBC TV news story about the record number of people leaving the UK last year. BBC News reported that 385,000 people emigrated from the UK in the 12 months to July 2006. Perhaps surprisingly, just under half of these were people who had themselves emigrated to the UK and had been living in the UK for more than a year. The BBC TV news story was widely reported in other publications as well such as in The Guardian, The Mirror, The Age, thisislondon.co.uk, Reuters, etc as well as on the BBC's own web-site. Morgan said that the recent bad weather had lead to a larger number of enquiries than normal from people looking to use workpermit.com to help them emigrate. "Normally in July and August time its quite quiet but this year we've been inundated," he...

The General Skilled Migration (GSM) program for Australian visas will change from 01 September 2007. There will be major restructuring of the visa categories. From 01 September, the current fifteen categories of temporary visas will be reduced to nine categories.

The Australian government has published a draft of what the new citizenship test will look like. Legislation for the new citizenship test still needs to be passed by the Parliament, and is expected to become law and to be implemented later this year. It is hoped that the test will help newcomers more easily integrate into Australian society.

British Liberal Democrats have weighed in with a new policy position on illegal immigration in the United Kingdom. Last week they issued a paper and statements coming out in favor of a limited, "earned amnesty" for some illegal immigrants. Much tighter border controls would also be part of the new...