UK Immigration News

David Blunkett, Home Secretary to the UK, says he is ready to takeactions against exploitation of foreign workers. Blunkett is alsoquestioning the parliamentary opposition, which would like to see thatthere is a quota of foreign professionals occupying jobs in the UK.

"Thefacts are that we need migrant labor. We have a vibrant economy and wecan have a dual approach, which doesn't see managed migration as analternative to training, to improved education and to better welfare towork policies.

Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (CIC), JudySgro, and Saskatchewan's Minister Responsible for Immigration, PatAtkinson, announced Nov. 29 that language training for adults migratingto Saskatchewan will be launched in the near future.

Morethan $264,000 has been earmarked to support the project which will helpmeet the needs of the province's growing labor market and economy. Thetraining program will run till next year, but an agreement between CICand the Saskatchewan government foresee that the program will berenewable for the next four years.

Processing times for work permits have not changed over the last month. A work permit application in the UK takes up to five days. Applicants under the Highly Skilled Migrant Program (HSMP) can expect to wait the longest, maybe even as long as 26 weeks.

If you are in the UK already on a work permit or under HSMP, you will probably also have to submit a Leave to Remain application which could take up to 13 more weeks to process.

Processing times for work permits have not changed over the last month. A work permit application in the UK takes up to 5 days. If you are in the UK already and need to also apply for leave to remain on the basis of a work permit this takes 10 weeks.

The first minister of Scotland, Jack McConnell, is determined to bring Scotland back on the map as a country where foreign skilled professionals would want to live and work. Without immigrants, the Scottish population is expected to decline drastically over the coming years.

Since EU expansion, 91,000 people from the new member states haveregistered to work in Britain. The amount of people registered hassurpassed the Home Office expectations by far.

Shadow HomeSecretary David Davies has described the British immigrations system asa "shambles" following the release of this official figure, promptingspeculations of radical changes to the UK immigration system.

Theofficial estimate of the Home Office suggests that some 5,000 to 13,000people per year from the new EU member states would register to work inthe UK.