Immigration news

The US government has offered a "road map," or a set of instructions, on how Eastern European countries can gain visa-free travel to the US, like their Western European counterparts.

US officials and officials in eastern Europe say the instructions have little value, and some call the instructions a Catch-22. The US says it is up to a foreign country to meet the law's requirements, the first of which is that the US visa refusal rate for a country cannot be higher than 3 percent. But it is the American embassies and consulates that decide how many applicants are rejected.

Ukraine wants its citizens to have visa-free travel to the European Union, following Kiev's temporary lifting of visitor visa requirements for tourists from the 25 EU states.

"We have introduced a visa-free system for EU and Swiss citizens and we count on similar improvements for our compatriots," Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said in a speech at a Council of Europe summit in Warsaw on 16 May.

"I would like to appeal to the heads of European states to respond to measures we have taken."

The French government has banned several hundred thousand foreigners who benefited from an immigration amnesty in Spain from working in France. It was reported that many of those people who were granted the right to stay in Spain were "illegal immigrants" from France. Apparently, they hoped that this would enable them to then go back to France and live and work in France. It should be noted that if you are a non EU Citizen who has gained residence status in a particular EU Country this will not in most cases enable you to work in another EU Country.

Just a week after being reelected, Tony Blair revealed that changes to the government's immigration laws would affect foreign workers and overseas students.

Despite its cold climate, Canada is fast becoming the country of choice for many middle-class professional Filipinos. They are leaving the tropical Philippines to immigrate to Canada in hopes of finding a better future, reports AFP.

Unemployment is running at about 11 percent in the Philippines and rising, and, with 700,000 new college graduates every year, the country cannot create enough skilled jobs to accommodate them.

Foreign visitors from 27 countries will have to present machine-readable passports at US borders as of June 26 to enter the United States without a visa, officials said.

Travelers from the so-called visa waiver countries may still enter without a visa only when they have a passport that can be read by Immigration and Customs Enforcement machines, the State Department said in a statement.

Nationals of Andorra, Brunei, Liechtenstein and Slovenia have needed the new passports for visa-free travel since October, 2003 and Belgians have needed them since May 2003.