US Immigration News

US President George W Bush has begun touring US states to rally support for his strategy to control immigration. Mr Bush wants tighter security along the Mexican frontier, but he also plans to allow migrants with a job offer to stay in the US temporarily. Some of his own supporters resist the so-called guest-worker plan.

"The programme... would not create an automatic path to citizenship. It wouldn't provide amnesty," Mr Bush told border officials in Tucson, Arizona.

Klaus and Flavia Westerwelle seldom play lotteries. They've already hit the big one. The Associated Press reports.

The evidence can be spotted on the living-room wall of their Eastside home: 15 hand-quilted American flags that used to adorn the wall in their home in Germany. That was before the couple hit their life-changing lottery in 1997.

As the Associated Press reports, there's no shortage of work for Mike Kirby, a 21-year-old apprentice electrician in Iowa who's lately been on the job 10 hours a day, seven days a week.He and others in the traditional trades are in great demand throughout the United States, with many trades groups and employers hotly recruiting high school students to try and fill the growing need for everything from plumbers to bricklayers and drywallers.

IMMIGRANT NUMBERS FOR DECEMBER 2005

A. STATUTORY NUMBERS

A newspaper in the African country Ghana reveals that an average of 8,000 highly trained and skilled Ghanaians leave the country annually for the US through the Green Card Lottery.

Thousands of India's skilled workers hoping for a career in the US may be disappointed. The House of Representatives has passed its version of the budget deficit reduction bill without any proposal to increase the annual cap of H-1B visas by 30,000 as suggested by the US Senate.