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The French government has modified certain aspects of its immigration policy after riots in poor suburbs earlier this month - even though most of the rioters were born in France.
Under pressure from right-wingers in his own party, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced plans to restrict the re-unification of immigrant families and to impose tighter selection rules on foreign students from outside the EU.
Parents are to blame for a shortage of skilled workers in Australia, the authors of a new study claim. Ambitious mums and dads are pushing children to enrol in high-status university degrees such as law, without regard to the labour market, the authors say.
Australia is suffering a shortage of workers with in-demand qualifications and skills in industries such as construction and mining, with some projects delayed as a result.
As the US state of Hawaii broadens its reach into high-technology industries, employers are finding the federal limits on immigration restricting their ability to hire computer engineers and other technical workers from overseas.
With few technical experts available locally, Hawaii is now running into the same problems experienced in recent years by companies in Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston and other technology hotbeds. With few Americans available to do the work, companies are turning to applicants from other countries.
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.
Rural Australian fruit growers desperate for workers have been helped out by the large number of backpackers who took advantage of changes to the working holiday maker visa scheme.Three weeks after the Government allowed visitors to extend their visa to stay on and pick fruit in the bush, the Immigration Department revealed yesterday that 500 working holidaymakers had already taken up the option. The changes to the scheme came after pleas from Coalition MPs in regional areas.