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The UK's Prime Minister David Cameron has insisted that the UK can still reduce net immigration to below 100,000 a year by the time of the general election in May 2015. He said that this was 'perfectly feasible' but admitted that immigration has not yet come down as much as he would have liked.
Australian immigration may have peaked, according to the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Net inward migration in the year to March 2014 stood at 380,910. This is slightly down from the January 2013 figure of 411,000. But, it still amounts to 1.65% of the Australian population. As such, it is still, as Pete Wargent of the Australian propertyobserver.com.au website says, a 'huge' figure.
The Australian immigration minister Scott Morrison has announced 'sweeping changes' to the way Australia defends its borders. The principle innovation is the creation of the Australian Border Force (ABF).
The ABF will be made up of customs and immigration staff. It will be based in the Australian capital territory of Canberra and led by a commissioner who will be of similar seniority to the Chief of the Defence Force (Australian armed services). The Commissioner will report directly to the immigration minister.
The number of young foreigners visiting Canada as part of the International Experience Canada (IEC) programme has risen sharply according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). CIC says that it expects some 20,000 young people, aged between 18 and 35, to arrive in Canada with IEC visas in 2014.
International Experience Canada allows young people from 32 countries with relevant bilateral treaties with Canada to spend a year living and working in Canada (the minimum age is 18 and the maximum age is 30 for some countries and 35 for others). Applicants from the Republic of Ireland can stay for two years.
The next set of official UK immigration statistics are likely to show an increase of more than 25% in the number of Romanians and Bulgarians living in the UK since the same time last year, according to the Migration Observatory at Oxford University.
Dr Carlos Villas-Silva, a senior research at the Migration Observatory, said 'It is almost certain that we are going to see an increase in that number from the first quarter in 2013 to the first quarter in 2014," he said. "We would expect at least 30,000 more… that would be the minimum you would expect.
A leading London think tank claims that 30% of the UK's population will be made up of people from ethnic minorities by 2050. In England, by far the most populous country in the UK, that figure will rise to 50%.
A new report from the Policy Exchange think tank; A Portrait of Modern Britain, containsanalysis and projections byProfessor Philip Rees of the University of Leeds from census data.