Topical:
Australia's immigration department has completed a review of its IT systems and has found it needs a radical overhaul that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.Funding for the project is expected to be approved in the federal Budget in May.
The department has completed a strategic blueprint for replacing aging systems and software, Immigration's deputy secretary and chief information officer Bob Correll told AustralianIT.
The mining business in the Bowen Basin of Australia is booming, and many employers are struggling to find enough skilled staff locally. Some local firms have taken the initiative and are actively recruiting staff from overseas as part of a skilled migration scheme.
David Hinder is the director of a local engineering firm and says he's been scouring the country for the last two or three years for skilled people, mainly boilermakers and sheet metal workers.
Toronto, Canada's Globe and Mail on Friday examined the challenges facing HIV-positive recent immigrants in Toronto and the ways in which they receive support.
In 2005, 19% of new HIV cases in Toronto occurred among people born in countries with endemic HIV, according to the Globe and Mail. About 20% to 50% of new cases among immigrants occur after they arrive in Canada, Robert Remis, a researcher at the University of Toronto, said.
Some lawyers and educators are calling for changes in U.S. immigration policies. They say current rules are too restrictive and discourage talented people from around the world from coming to the United States to study, teach and work. They worry that many of them will go to other countries instead, diminishing the United States' ability to compete in many fields.
The United States is a nation built and sustained by its immigrants. But some experts worry that increasingly tough immigration laws in a post-September 11, 2001 world are limiting the flow of highly skilled people into this country.
The UK's Immigration and Nationality Directorate has welcomed back an IT supplier that was at the centre of its previous computer failures.The Home Office commissioned Siemens Business Services to run IT systems for processing work permit and immigration application fees, it said on 21 February 2006. The £6.7m outsourcing contract marks a return to the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) for the supplier. The directorate replaced Siemens Business Services with Atos Origin to run its main IT operations in 2004 after it was forced to shelve a failing £77m computer system.
Immigrants seeking entrance into the United Kingdom now have an easier route to follow, thanks to December's law allowing gay civil unions. Homosexual couples now have the same immigration rights as married heterosexual couples, and can receive a full passport after two years in the country.
The UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group recently marked the changes the civil partnership legislation has made to international couples, while calling for more help in tackling the problems facing lesbian and gay refugees.