Immigration news

Michael Easson, an immigration advisor to the Australian government has said that claims by government ministers that there is widespread abuse of the Temporary Work (Skilled) Visa (Subclass 457), better known as the '457 visa' are false.

Mr Easson, the chairman of the ministerial advisory council on skilled migration, told journalists that there had been 'unhealthy rhetoric' on the subject. This appears to be a reference to the immigration minister Brendan O'Connor who announced in February that the government would crack down on abuse of the system or 'rorting'.

An amendment to the immigration reform law currently before the US Congress will require foreign nationals to have their fingerprints taken when leaving the country. The amendment to the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act 2013 was voted in by the Judiciary Committee of the US Senate, the upper house of Congress.

Now it has been adopted, the checks will be introduced if the reform act achieves a sufficient majority in both houses of Congress; the Senate and The House of Representatives.

Canadian immigration minister Jason Kenney will travel to Silicon Valley in the US this weekend to try to tempt high-tech entrepreneurs to apply for a Canadian visa program that could see their business dreams become a reality, as in the popular TV show The Dragon's Den.

The Australian Senate has voted for an amendment which would allow the authorities to take asylum seekers who land on the Australian mainland and hold them in offshore processing camps on Nauru and the Papua New Guinean island of Manus. Until now, only those asylum seekers who were intercepted at sea or who landed on Australian offshore territories like Christmas Island could be held in the camps.

The latest figures show that there has been a significant drop in the net level of immigration into the UK. The net immigration figure is reached by calculating the number of immigrants over a given period and then subtracting the number of people leaving the country permanently. In the year to September 2012, 500,000 people immigrated and 347,000 left so the net immigration figure was 153,000. This is 89,000 lower than the 242,000 figure for the year to September 2011; 242,000.

Comprehensive immigration reform came a step closer for the US on Tuesday when the US Senate's powerful Judiciary Committee voted 13-5 in favour of a bill that would radically alter almost every aspect of the US's immigration system.