UK Immigration News

British universities are short of lecturers to teach maths, physics, chemistry and engineering, a report on the UK's academic workforce revealed.

For the past 10 years, universities have been trying to cope with growing student numbers by hiring more foreign academics. The number of academics from eastern and central Europe tripled between 1995 and 2003, while twice as many came from western Europe and Scandinavia and there were substantial increases in lecturers from Asia, Australasia and North America.

Tens of thousands of migrant workers in the UK's East Anglia should be given more help in getting state benefits, according to a new report.Researchers estimate there are up to 80,000 people in the region from a variety of countries including Portugal and a range of Eastern European nations.The migrant workers contribute more than £360m to the East Anglian economy, and some businesses rely on their labour for survival.

Indian IT workers are flooding the UK, undercutting local wages and raising prospects of a homegrown skills shortage, an IT association has claimed.

"Wages are being undercut by companies bringing over Indian workers, who are put up in hostels and paid poorly," Ann Swain, chief executive of the Association for Technology Staffing Companies (Atsco) told the Daily Telegraph.

According to her, salaries for certain IT workers have fallen in recent months.

Thousands of nurses and midwives are still being hired from the world's poorest countries to work in the UK in spite of government attempts to restrict recruitment by private agencies, the Guardian revealed.

The Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George said the practice of hiring from Africa and other underdeveloped countries was destroying efforts to fight Aids, tuberculosis and other epidemic diseases. Losing trained medical staff can have a huge impact on poor countries that have high burdens of disease and chronically understaffed hospitals.

The UK Government is introducing a new immigration category that allows religious workers in non-preaching roles to come to the UK to work for up to two years. This will cover workers whose duties include performing religious rites - such as reading the scriptures aloud or tending to the deities - but not preaching to a congregation.

Hundreds of same-sex couples in the United Kingdom have flocked to government offices to file for civil partnerships in the last week.

Thomas Bauer said he mentioned in the barbershop that he had just come from registering his intent to form a partnership on December 5, the first day he was legally able to do so.

"Three people waiting to have a trim burst into applause," he wrote.