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President Obama has used a speech in South Korea to call on the US Congress to pass immigration reform. The President was speaking at a naturalisation ceremony for members of the US military who were born outside the US.
Mr Obama said that the US must 'fix our broken immigration system' and attract 'the brightest and the best'. He urged Congress 'pass common sense immigration reform'.
The Conservative Party, the largest party in the UK parliament and the senior partner in the UK's Coalition government, fears that the release of immigration figures could adversely affect its electoral prospects at the European elections to be held on May 22nd.
It has emerged that the next set of UK immigration figures will be published by the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 22nd May, the day of the elections to the European Parliament.
A Canadian academic has called on the federal government to close the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and, instead, to grant more permanent residence visas to international workers.
Professor David Green of the University of British Columbia, says that the TFWP disadvantages foreign workers, who can only work for one named employer. The employer is therefore able to pay them low, exploitative wages. This disadvantages both the foreign worker and Canadian workers who are undercut by low-wage competition from TFWP workers, he says.
The maverick mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has called on the UK government to grant an immigration amnesty to all illegal immigrants who have been in the country for ten years.
Mr Johnson said 'The alternative is to continue in a situation in which half a million people or maybe 750,000 people in Britain, most of them in London, not registered, with no papers, contributing to the London economy, making money, but not paying tax'.
The UK's Home Office, the government department responsible for immigration matters, has admitted that a computerised immigration checking system which has cost at least £500m to develop doesn't work.
Last month, a senior immigration official said that the program, known as e-Borders, had been 'terminated' in its original form. The scope and scale of the project has been limited and it has been renamed the Border System Programme.
The Home Office, the UK government department that deals with immigration matters, has announced that it will stop accepting applications for Tier 1 (General) visa extensions from 6th April 2015.
The Tier 1 (General) visa stream opened in 2008 as a replacement for the Highly Skilled Migrant Program (HSMP). It was part of the new five-tier points based immigration system introduced by the last Labour government.