Immigration news

From the small town of Toowoomba near Australia's Gold Coast, Dennis Davey is searching the world for people to work in his 200-person engineering company. The Los Angeles Times reports.He has snared 15 workers from South Africa and 15 more from China. Some of the South Africans have already been poached away by the town's mining companies, so if the latest batch of Chinese works out, Davey says, he will bring over at least 50 more."We have no choice," he said in a telephone interview. "We can't find any more people."

Germany's population shrank for a third straight year in 2005 as the trend of fewer births than deaths continued. Immigration did not compensate for the deficit, Federal Statistics Office data showed.

There were about 82.45 million people living in Germany last year, a decline of around 50,000 from 2004's total of 82.5 million, the Office said. Sandra Petcov, an economist at Lehman Brothers in London, said Germany's shrinking population meant it was never going to see rates of overall economic expansion comparable to countries with a growing population.

Business professionals from India are one of the largest national groups applying for Australian business visas. India is already among the top four countries providing Australia with skilled migrants on a permanent or temporary basis.

As Canada goes to the polls on 23 January, nearly 45 candidates of Indian origin will be running. The candidates have spent the past few weeks trying to attract the immigrant community with speeches in their native Hindi and Punjabi, as well as making promises to take up issues close to their hearts.

As has been reported on workpermit.com numerous times, Australia is currently scouring the world for skilled immigrants. The trend is likely to continue, as an increasing number of skilled workers is leaving Australia, continuing the country's brain drain.

The EU ruled on 19 January that some of Germany's visa restrictions in its Immigration Act are illegal.

Specifically, the Court of Justice said that visa restrictions forcing non-EU workers posted to Germany by European service companies to have worked a year at the firm prior to being sent are illegal.