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The number of asylum applications to the UK has dropped, but the UK government said it is not removing failed applicants from the country fast enough. There were 6,220 asylum applications to Britain, excluding dependants, between April and June this year against 7,915 in the same period last year, a fall of 21%.
The figure is also an 11% drop on applications in the first quarter of this year.
The New Zealand Government is trying to encourage its own expatriate New Zealanders to come home. More than 460,000 New Zealand-born citizens - or 14 per cent of the NZ-born population - live overseas. About 600 New Zealanders leave each week for Australia.
A New York state judge ruled on 18 Aug., that New York state must pay the same benefits to legal immigrants as it does to US citizens, even though the US federal government has stopped paying its share.
The decision restores higher aid payments to thousands of disabled legal immigrants, many of them elderly refugees who were facing eviction after being cut off from federal and state disability benefits because they had not become United States citizens within a seven-year period set by Congress.
Occasionally, UK immigrants may be required to submit a leave to remain (LtR) application before the outcome of the work permit (WP) or Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP) application.
Australia's Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) is heading to London to try to recruit British immigrants, to fill a severe skills shortage. Australia, as reported earlier on workpermit.com, hopes to recruit 20,000 skilled workers from around the world.In 2004, 18,000 Britons migrated to Australia, and the UK provides the largest percentage of skilled immigrants to Australia. Recently the Australian Government raised its 2005 target for skilled immigrants to 97,500.
As workpermit.com reported this week, the US government has filled its allotment of 65,000 H-1B visas for the fiscal year 2006 and is not accepting new applications.
Representativesof the high tech industry say that America does not produce enoughhome-grown workers with the needed skills, and depends on the H-1B visato supplement the workforce. Historically, H-1B visa holders come in large numbers from India, followed by China, South Korea and the Philippines.