Australia and New Zealand Immigration News

The New Zealand government wants to modernize and simplify the legislation to establish a fair and fast decision-making process to protect the country's interests. There are, however, plenty of public concerns with a few of the new proposals.

Australia has boosted its number of skilled workers in its labour force by 78,000 already this year. This has been achieved by immigration policies put in place by the Australian Government, to solve the country's current skills shortage in its domestic labour force.

Canberra, the national capital of Australia, is experiencing a running shortfall of skilled workers in health care, trades, construction and the sciences, and the problem is expected to worsen before it improves.

A major campaign by the New Zealand government using a website to entice expats to return home is experiencing falling visitor numbers.

The Australian opposition leader Kim Beazley opposed the Australian Government saying that it has increased the levels of skilled migration at the expense of training Australians and therefore had created a domestic skills shortage.

The opposition Labour leader said more training of young Australians needs to be addressed, not increasing skilled labour to the country.

New Zealand is looking to introduce tough new measures that will make it harder to enter the country and easier to deport people.

The Immigration Minister David Cunliffe unveiled the sweeping proposals April 5, and hopes that New Zealand will attract more skilled workers from overseas and keep out so called "undesirables."

Cunliffe says the changes will simplify and streamline the entry of migrants wanted in New Zealand, and enhance border security.