Global Immigration Immigration News

An investigation by a UK newspaper has made the claim that many of the migrant workers who are building the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar live in squalid conditions and many are not being paid.

The Guardian report says that some migrant workers claim not to have been paid for over a year. According to the report they are living in desperate conditions. Others are apparently working for less than US$1 per day.

The Qatari government has expressed 'dismay' at the allegations.

A poll of Chinese millionaires reveals that 65% of them want to gain permanent residence in overseas Countries. They give various reasons for wishing to do so such as a desire to access better education for their children, a desire to escape the extreme pollution found in much of China and legal uncertainty about the status of their wealth in China.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released figures which suggest that migration has a broadly neutral financial impact on countries which host large immigrant populations.

The OECD has published an edition of its Migration Policy Debates leaflet dealing with the benefits of migration for host countries. It says 'The study suggests the impact of the cumulative waves of migration that arrived over the past 50 years in OECD countries is on average close to zero, rarely exceeding 0.5% of GDP in either positive or negative terms'.

A new survey by The Economist has found that Singapore is the most expensive city to live in in the world for expatriates. Singapore is a very expensive place to buy clothes, manufactured goods and alcohol. The price of utilities is rising. It also has a strong currency which contributes to the cost of living.

Chinese nationals have lodged more than 90% of applications for the new Australian Significant Investor Visa since it opened in November 2012. The Significant Investor Visa allows wealthy foreign nationals to obtain Australian residence visas in return for a $5m investment. Of 545 applicants so far, nearly 500 are Chinese.

The Significant Investor Programme opened for business shortly after the Canadian Immigrant Investor Program (IIP), another visa for wealthy foreign nationals, was suspended in July 2012.

Indian immigration authorities have accused staff at the US embassy school in New Delhi of tax and visa offences. This is being seen as retaliation for the arrest of an Indian diplomat in New York for visa offences in December 2013