Immigration news

In a Parliament session yesterday, MPs rejected a proposal made by the Social Democrat party in power to restrict the entry of workers from the new EU accession countries.

This means that Sweden will be only the third EU country joining Ireland and the UK in deciding to open its labour market to citizens of the new EU member states. Unlike in the UK and Ireland, however, who will restrict access to welfare benefits, these new workers from Central and Eastern Europe will only have to work ten hours a week to qualify for access to social security provisions.

With the EU enlargement date looming, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced plans to review UK immigration policy. Business leaders were told that abuses of the immigration system will be prevented by the new restrictions on welfare benefits to migrants from Central and Eastern Europe.

Blair reminded businesses at the CBI conference in London that unemployed migrants from Eastern Europe will not have access to council houses and will be prevented from "benefits-shopping".

The NZIS has announced a new Working Holiday Scheme that allows young citizens of the United States to travel to New Zealand to holiday and work to supplement their travel for a period of up to 12 months. There will be 500 working holiday visas made available to US citizens every year from 1 May to 30 April.

New EU member states will not enjoy visa-free travel to the USA anytime soon unlike the "old" EU member states. Of the 15 current members, only Greek citizens must apply for a visa to travel to the US. On the other side of the continent, only Slovenia meets the criteria for visa-free travel to the USA out of the new member states.

Furthermore, the accession countries will not be able to invoke a law that would require support from other EU member states on the issue.

Further to our report on South African residents being able to make an online visa application to the UK,visa applicants in Finland and Germany wishing to work or study the UK can also now make their applications via the Internet. Under the same online system called "visa4uk," the process will help facilitate and speed up the process of issuing visas for the UK.

The Home Office has announced that from 1 May 2004, three new countries will be added to the list of countries whose nationals are exempt from the charge for Immigration Employment Documents (IED) (work permit) applications. These countries are:

It has been realised that these countries are indeed signatories to the Council of Europe Charter or the Social Charter when this IED charge was introduced on 1 April 2003. These countries were never included on the original list of exemptions, and Armenia should have been included on this list from 1 March 2004.