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Immigration New Zealand (INZ) is to reassess hundreds of Family Stream visa applications after an investigation into the criteria used by staff to make their decisions.
Doubts about the correctness of the decisions first began to arise in 2013 after 14 people whose applications for visas had been rejected complained to the New Zealand Immigration Ombudsman. The 14 decisions were all made by staff at INZ offices in Mumbai and New Delhi.
The UK's Higher Education Statistics Agency has released figures which show the first ever fall in the number of international students starting courses at UK universities. Experts in the UK's export education sector blame the policies of the UK's Coalition government for this fall.
The Higher Education Standards Authority has released figures which show that the number of Indian students starting at UK universities is down by 26% on last year and the number of Pakistani students down by 19%.
The Australian Industry Group, (Ai Group) a pressure group that lobbies on behalf of Australian industry, has called on the country's Coalition government to raise the number of immigrants admitted each year from 190,000 annually to 220,000 with immediate effect.
The Chief Executive of Ai Group, Innes Willox, has written to the Australian immigration minister Scott Morrison urging the government to increase skilled immigration in particular.
PhD graduates of the University of Toronto have complained that they have been wrongly rejected after applying for permanent residence visas under the Federal Skilled Worker Program. Two students have taken their complaint to a Canadian newspaper to try to raise publicity about their. They claim that many others have been similarly turned down.
The Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) is Canada's main skilled immigration programme. It allows highly qualified people to apply for permanent residence visas. Applicants can apply for a visa in one of three categories:
The UK prepared itself for an influx of Romanians and Bulgarians on 1st January 2014 but, so far at least, it hasn't happened. On 31st December 2013, transitional controls preventing the free movement of Bulgarians and Romanians to work in the UK and other EU countries expired.
The UK's prime minister David Cameron has ordered that the release of a government report commissioned by the Home Secretary Theresa May should be delayed until after the European elections in May 2014.
The Financial Times, a UK newspaper, reports that Mr Cameron believes that the report might be damaging to the Conservatives' chances in the election. The FT reports that some Whitehall insiders believe that it will never be published.