Australia and New Zealand Immigration News

Since the installation of a new hotline was established in February 2004 in Australia, 50,000 calls were made turning in illegal workers and visa over-stayers.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the community played a critical role in protecting the immigration system.

"Information provided through the dob-in line and other telephone contact with the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs is passed to the departments compliance officers around the country," she said.

Immigrants from Asia are leading a migration boom to Australia's Victoria, figures show. Almost half of the 30,581 migrants who made Victoria their home in 2004-05 were born in Asian nations.

India was the top source country with 3491 arrivals, up from 1103 a decade ago. China was next with 3059 newcomers, up from 936 in 1994-95, according to the latest Immigration Department data.

A change to the way skilled migrants are selected will target top quality migrants and will increase the benefits to New Zealand employers, Immigration Minister David Cunliffe said 21 Dec.

"New Zealand is an attractive destination for skilled migrants. Demand is high for places in our residence categories. We can afford to be more selective to target the top talent, and those with job offers in areas of skill shortage," Mr Cunliffe said.

New research shows the benefit of immigration to New Zealand, Minister of Immigration, David Cunliffe said this week. Findings of the report showed an increased focus on attracting skilled migrants and a well-balanced spread of countries of origin and regional settlement within New Zealand.

"This provides evidence that the current immigration programme is delivering benefits to the New Zealand economy," Mr Cunliffe said.

Lamb shearers are in short supply as summer shearing enters a bottleneck in New Zealand, which could be aggravated by a bumper lambing season. They hope to alleviate the problem by using overseas workers.

Some contractors were still waiting for shearers to confirm their availability for Christmas, said the past president of the New Zealand Shearing Contractors' Association (NZSCA), Ron Davis. The industry was short of shearers at this time of the year. "This has been the trend for the last 10 years, and it has just built up.

With racial tensions rising around the nation, timely new research looks at what migrants truly think of Australia and Australians, and vice versa.

The report, by Adelaide University, has been released at a time when more migrants than ever were calling Australia home, and Australia had the largest immigration program for decades.