Topical:
One of the majority parties in coalition, the Christian Democrats, haverecently proposed taking away the rights of immigrants to hold twopassports, citing the claim that this simply hinders the integrationprocess.
The new proposal would force any immigrant taking up Dutch citizen to giveup their former citizenship, including handing in their old passport to thegovernment authorities.
Work Permits (UK) has recently announced that Government Ministers havegranted permission to extend the current Sector Based Scheme (SBS) pilotprogramme for another year. The programme is intended to run until at least31 January 2005 due to the success of this programme. During the year the SBSprogramme will be reviewed by Work Permits (UK) in conjunction with otherGovernment Departments to see how this scheme has impacted the UK economyand certain sectors of industry.
Based upon first quarter INS figures released on the number of H-1B applications, the number of H-1B approvals and applications still awaiting a decision total over 43,000. This means that by mid- February of this year, the H-1B cap of 43,500 applications will be reached and no new applications can be approved in this fiscal year (01 October 2003 to 30 September 2004).
A petition in opposition to plans giving non-European nationals living inBelgium limited voting rights has been signed by 50,000 Belgians recently.
A committee has been formed comprising some members of the radical right"Vlaams Blok" party to speak out against voting rights for foreigners. Thecommittee claims that 50,000 actual signatures have been gathered to opposethe Government's plans. In addition to actual signatures, the committeeclaims that a further 8,000 text messages of support have been received andten thousand more people have actually signed the online petition.
Instead of completely closing borders to accession country nationals after 1May, when 10 Central and Eastern European countries will become full EUmembers, the Dutch government is simply considering imposing a maximum limiton the number of East European immigrants allowed to enter after accession.
The proposed restrictions include imposing the requirement of a work permitfor these immigrants, which means that a job offer and employment contractwill need to be in place before they would be able to come to theNetherlands.
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