Immigration news

The UK's Chief Inspector of Immigration, John Vine, has been conducting research into abuse of the marriage system by immigrants seeking to obtain residence in the UK.

Mr Vine has warned that sham marriages are 'a massive loophole' which is allowing thousands of people to enter the UK and remain in the country illegally.

Mr Vine said 'Sham marriages between non-Europeans and EU nationals are an increasing threat to immigration control. If not detected, they allow individuals to settle in the UK on the basis of relationships that are not genuine'.

Canada's immigration minister, Chris Alexander, has introduced legislation in the Canadian parliament that would increase the required residency period before immigrants could apply for citizenship to four years from the current three years.

Mr Alexander announced the bill at a press conference at Fort York in Toronto, the site of a historic battle between Canada and the United States in 1812. He said that the bill would 'increase, reinforce the value of Canadian citizenship which we all sense but which needs to be renewed in every generation'.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are to expand their US site inspection program to take in the employers of L-1 visas as well as H-1B visas. They will make unannounced site visits to prevent abuse of the L-1 visa by firms breaching 'anti job-shop rules'.

The visits are expected to begin in the first quarter of the 2014-15 fiscal year. The US fiscal year begins on October 1st. It is not yet clear whether site visits will only be made to sites where new L-1 petitions have been made or whether there will also be visits to existing L-1 sponsors.

A leading British historian has denounced the UK's student visa regime as 'stupid, incoherent, short-sighted, cack-handed, intrusive and counter-productive'.

Professor Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at Oxford University, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, derides the UK's Coalition government for introducing a 'Kafkaesque, intrusive bureaucracy' where 'everyone is treated as a suspect'.

A new proposal from the UK's Coalition government to limit access to social welfare payments by EU citizens has been branded illegal by the European Commission. This pronouncement escalates a war of words between the EU and the UK over the free movement of European workers.

The UK's Work and Pensions Minister, Ian Duncan Smith, has decreed that, from March 1st onwards, EU migrants to the UK must normally be able to show that they have earned at least £150 per week for at least three months before they can claim UK benefits such as Jobseekers Allowance (unemployment benefit).

A new report from a Canadian think tank alleges that recent changes to the Canadian citizenship regime favour some immigrants over others and run contrary to the Canadian multicultural ethos.

The report, Becoming Canadian, was written for the Institute for Research into Public Policy by Dr Elke Winter. The Institute is Canada's oldest non-partisan think tank. Dr Winter says that the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, elected in 2006, has introduced changes to the citizenship process that favour educated, and possibly white, immigrants.