Immigration news

Greece has announced they are quadrupling the number of guards at their border with Turkey and increasing other security defenses because of a potential influx of Syrian refugees. Thousands of Syrians have fled to Turkey after civil unrest broke out in their country.

The UK Border Agency has introduced a priority visa service in Ghana. The priority visa service is available to UK visa applicants who pay an additional fee to have their visa application placed at the front of the queue.You can apply for a UK visa using this service if you meet the following criteria:

Citizenship and Immigration Canada's (CIC) Parliamentary Secretaries Chungsen Leung and Rick Dykstra have begun a series of consultations on Canada's immigration issues. The two Parliamentary Secretaries will meet with stakeholders and the public to discuss the appropriate level of immigration for Canada in the coming years. Meetings will take place in Toronto, Windsor, Vancouver, Halifax, and Ottawa. Additionally, online consultations are open to the public and stakeholders for input.

The UK Home Affairs Select Committee has reprimanded the UK Border Agency (UKBA) for its backlog of 276,460 unresolved immigration and asylum cases as being "totally unacceptable". Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs committee, has now called upon senior officials at UKBA to return bonuses worth £3.5 million, which they received, despite the increasing backlog of cases.

Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) announced the opening of a new NEXUS lane at the Abbotsford-Huntingdon, British Columbia and Sumas, Washington border crossing. The lane is open from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., seven days a week for entry into Canada. NEXUS members must be a citizen of Canada or the US, or a permanent resident who has lived continuously in one or both of those countries for at least the past three years.

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU), has proposed a plan to deploy drones across the Mediterranean Sea to catch illegal immigrants. The Mediterranean is a major transit point for undocumented immigration. Already 170 immigrants have died trying to reach southern European shores this year.