Articles Posted in Global Immigration Stories

Canada has admitted recently that its new visa application form, criticized by Russia for seeking sensitive information on applicants’ military service, aims to weed out visitors inadmissible to Canada. Citizenship and Immigration Canada ‘must protect the health and safety of Canadians, maintain the security of Canadian society and promote international justice and security by fostering respect for human rights’.

‘Temporary resident applicants from a number of countries have been asked questions regarding military, security and political activities that could make someone inadmissible in the past to ensure that officers have adequate information when determining admissibility to Canada.’ The new visa application form merely attempts to standardize various questions that have been asked before and eliminate the need for country-specific forms.

Earlier, Russia protested against the new visa application form issued by Canada, complaining it will ‘seriously complicate’ the application process for Russians and could provoke reciprocal measures. ‘The modified Canadian form goes beyond the conventional criteria, and its adoption goes against the global tendency to ease visa regimes,’ Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said at a briefing. The new form will ‘make the process for Russian citizens to receive Canadian visas much harder,’ he added. Russian tourist operators also complained this week that the form, required for visa applicants outside Canada, asks for information that is illegal for Russian citizens to disclose. Applicants are asked to provide details about military service, including location of the military unit and name of the commanding officer.

Mauritius and Switzerland on Wednesday signed an agreement on short-stay visa waiver under which Mauritians could stay in the European country without visa for a maximum of three months in a six-month period.

Mauritius and the European Community (EC) signed a similar agreement on 28 May, 2009, allowing Mauritians to enter and stay without visa in the territory of the European Union (EU) member States within the Schengen Area for the same period.

Mauritian Secretary for Foreign Affairs Anun Neewoor, said that under the combined effect of both agreements Mauritians could travel without a visa to the 25 EU member States and Switzerland and stay for a maximum period of three months with multiple-entry facilities within a six-month period.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk backed on Thursday Bulgaria’s bid to join the European visa-free Schengen travel zone in 2011. “Bulgaria is on a fast track to join Schengen and Poland will help it in that direction.

Tusk also praised the government’s “steadfast efforts against corruption and organized crime.”
Borisov, on his part, thanked Tusk for the support, highlighting its importance in the light of Poland’s upcoming EU presidency in the second half of 2011.

Bulgaria is seeking to join the Schengen zone in March 2011 but is still awaiting the European Union’s final greenlight. The two premiers of the Bulgaria and Poland also discussed on the issues pertaining to economic crisis, gas deliveries and transportation links too.

The Green MEP said she expected the European Commission, EC, to open Kosovo’s path towards the White Schengen list, which allows citizens of a country to travel across most of the European Union without a visa, in the ‘next couple of weeks’.

The news follows the European Parliament’s approval last week of plans for Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina to join the list from January. The Green MEP said she expected the European Commission, EC, to open Kosovo’s path towards the White Schengen list, which allows citizens of a country to travel across most of the European Union without a visa, in the ‘next couple of weeks’.

If the Council of the European Union agrees to extend visa liberalization to the two Balkan states in November, Kosovars will be the only citizens of the region requiring visas to travel to the EU. The Austrian politician told Balkan Insight that she agreed with some Kosovars’ fears that such a step would transform Kosovo into a ‘ghetto’. Even those countries that don’t recognize Kosovo have said that Kosovo needs to be included in visa liberalization.

But she added that Kosovo’s image as a country of ‘criminals and corruption’ among certain member states, and increasing scepticism voiced by some major European powers, such as France, over extending visa liberalization, present obstacles on the road to visa liberalization for the world’s youngest state. Officials in Paris have expressed doubt in recent weeks about extending visa liberalization to Albania and Bosnia, which have now fulfilled the technical criteria to become members of the White Schengen List, according to the EC.

The Commission wants a measure [visa liberalization] but will not be dealing with its negative impacts,” an unnamed high-level French diplomat told Le Monde earlier this month. French State Secretary for European Affairs Pierre Lellouche called the visa policy a “matter of security” in a speech to the French parliament on September 29. He said that France would request “security guarantees” from Albania and Bosnia before it will support visa liberalization.

Visa liberalisation for Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia was granted in January this year and led to a spike in asylum claims in Belgium filed by citizens mainly from Serbia and Macedonia. In recent weeks it has emerged that Sweden has become the latest destination for Serbians seeking asylum. According to local reports, of the 22,045 applicants that have sought asylum in Sweden this year, about 4,000 declared Serbian citizenship, compared with 421 in the same period last year.

Canada has begun the process of procuring millions of electronic passports and plans to start issuing them in 2012. Canada’s ePassport will contain a “proximity contactless chip” that can only be read if it’s held within 10 centimetres of a reader and the machine-readable zone on page two has been scanned first. The chip will have the holder’s name, sex and date and place of birth, along with a digital photo of the bearer’s face. To verify ones identity, customs officials will match the information on the chip with the printed information and picture in the passport.

A June report by Acuity Market Intelligence predicted that by 2014, Canada will be the world’s ninth-largest issuer of ePassports, behind India, the United States, China, Brazil, Britain, the Philippines, Japan and France. By that same year, the top-10 ePassport countries will be spending $2.7 billion to purchase 77 million documents annually, says the Acuity report. Between them, they’ll account for 59 per cent of the ePassport market.

At least 90 countries will be offering ePassports by the end of this year, including almost all European nations. That will grow to 104 countries by 2014.

“So it appears not to be just a request for a book. It seems to be more of an issuance capability as well,” Pattinson said. “But it’s not entirely defined yet.”
Some ePassports include additional biometric information, such as fingerprints or iris scans, which could raise privacy concerns.

But Passport Canada says the only biometric information on Canada’s ePassport will be a photo of the holder’s face. Everything else on the chip will be identical to the information visible to the naked eye on page two of printed passports.

The risk that hackers will be able to “skim” personal details from ePassports has receded as governments have beefed up security measures.

“There are no concerns, in my view, of skimming if it’s done correctly,” said Pattinson, who advised the U.S. State Department on how to protect personal information on ePassports.

While there were reports a few years ago of some ePassports being compromised or badly configured, “none of ours have been subject to any questions to date,” Pattinson said.

Passport Canada originally planned to introduce electronic passports next year, but that’s been pushed back to 2012, said a spokeswoman.

The agency is now in the process of determining what it will charge for ePassports and how long they’ll remain valid. An adult passport now costs $87 and is valid for five years.

Those fees will likely rise for ePassports, and validity could be extended to as much as 10 years.

The Fiji Immigration Department approved 857 applications for dual citizenship between July 2009 and July this year. The dual citizenship status was granted under the Citizenship Decree which came into effect in April 2009.

Government says many of those that have been granted dual citizenship have invested in property, farming and tourism developments. The Department received a total of 1054 citizenship applications between July 2009 to July 2010.

The Decree allows for any child, spouse and former Fiji citizen to apply for citizenship by registration and also allows foreigners who are working, investing or residing in Fiji for the last ten years to apply for Fiji citizenship by naturalization. Government says the concept was introduced to allow those that have left Fiji to return and re-invest in the country.

There is continuing disagreement in the UK Coalition Government between the more pro-immigration Liberal Democrat Government Ministers and Conservative Party Government Ministers. The Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable has said that the interim immigration cap is doing “huge damage” to business.

Mr Cable is concerned that some companies may move jobs abroad because of the difficulty in obtaining Tier 2 visas and highly skilled Tier 1 visas for workers from overseas. Mr Cable says that he still wants a permanent cap from April 2011. However, he wants it to be more “flexible”.

The official view of the Conservative Party Prime Minister’s office is that the cap will still allow “the brightest and best to come to Britain”.The Home Secretary had previously announced that under the interim cap to April 2011 the number of non-EU workers allowed entry to the UK would be reduced by about 5% to 24,100.

The Business Secretary Vince Cable also had the following to say about the current problems in bringing in skilled professional staff into the UK:
I was talking to people in the City and there were two investment banks that recruit hundreds of people from the non-EU area, Indians and Americans. They were allowed only 30-40. They have moved some operations to Hong Kong. He added that he would still support the Coalition Government agreement on the cap. This will mean a permanent immigration cap on non-EU immigration from April 2011. Mr Cable went onto say that he wanted to have a flexible cap that will vary depending on the economic situation. During the General Election campaign the Conservative Party made a manifesto commitment to the immigration cap. The Liberal Democrats opposed the immigration cap.

It is hoped that the Liberal Democrat Government Ministers including the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg who supports Vince Cable vies on the immigration cap will have a moderating influence which will at the very least result in a more flexible immigration cap.

UK Immigration Minister Damian Green spoke recently at the Royal Commonwealth Society in London about immigration. The Immigration Minister said that the Government wishes to “maximize” the benefits of immigration. This means that the unsustainable levels of net migration seen in recent years must be brought down. He added that we need to understand more clearly why a significant proportion of students are still here more than 5 years after their arrival. And we also need a system which can scrutinize effectively, and if necessary take action against, those whose long-term presence would be of little or no economic benefit.

UK Immigration has done research recently on immigration into the UK and has published a new report about immigration called “The migrant journey”. The immigration report looks at what has happened to immigrants who came into the UK in 2004. According to UK immigration the largest group of migrants were the 186,000 students on student visas. The immigration minister went onto say that more than twenty percent of migrants were still in the UK five years later.

Immigration Minister Damian Green also said that some Tier 1 highly skilled work route are not doing specialized jobs. I was also struck by some of the individual applications I saw under the [Tier 2] skilled worker category: people running takeaway restaurants and production-line workers on salaries in the low £20,000s. These are not the sort of jobs we talk about when we think of bringing in skilled immigrants who have talents not available among our own workforce or the unemployed.

The UK immigration minister also defended the controversial annual limit on immigration and said that we absolutely need sustainable immigration levels. This will relieve pressure on public services, and stop immigration being such a delicate political issue. UK immigration has provided enormous economic benefits to the UK economy. Many people have commented that recent changes which have made immigration to the UK more difficult and more expensive will caused harm in the long term to the UK economy.

According to a New Zealand consulate general official, NZ is currently experiencing good growth in tourist numbers from India. The rise in Indian tourists is expected to be between 10 to 15 per cent by 2011. India is currently the tenth largest source market for NZ.

As a direct effect of the increasing number of Indian tourists, New Zealand (NZ) has decided to open its second Visa Facilitation Office for India in Mumbai by January 2011. The existing office in New Delhi currently processes visa applications from across the country. The Mumbai office will have staff and added resources and will service around 20,000 applicants per year easing the burden the from the Delhi office. Visa application facilitation services are currently outsourced to TT Services that operate in nine cities across India.

Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is currently on a visit to various Countries in the World. Immigration Minister Kenney will be visiting Paris, New Delhi, Chandigarh, Hong Kong, Beijing and Manila. The Immigration Minister will be trying to reduce immigration fraud. There have been concerns about marriages of convenience and crooked immigration consultants.In Paris the Canadian immigration minister will meet with various European Ministers including the French immigration minister about illegal immigration, border security, human trafficking and smuggling, and the resettlement of refugees.

Immigration Minister Keeney in his visit to Chandigarh, India, will discuss progress on anti-fraud initiatives since his previous meeting in January 2009 with the Chief Minister of Punjab. The Immigration Minister said: “In 2009, our Chandigarh mission was seeing a large volume of fraudulent documents being submitted as part of immigration applications, including fake marriage licenses, fake death certificates, fake university admission letters, fake wedding photos, fake bank statements, fake visa counterfoils, fake newspaper articles, and fake letters of endorsement from Members of Parliament.”
“At the time, Punjab officials indicated they shared my concern with this illegal activity and committed to crack down on crooked consultants. Since then, there have been media reports of a number of arrests in Punjab of crooked immigration consultants. I look forward to discussing progress made to-date and our continued cooperation on this issue.”
On a positive note Immigration Minister Kenney will also give a talk in Punjab on the significant increases in the approval rate for temporary resident visas and the volume of applications since 2005. The Immigration Minister in his visits to New Delhi, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Manila will also look at the effects of increased skilled immigration to Canada. There will also be a joint announcement with the government of Manitoba and the Association of Canadian Community Colleges in Beijing and an announcement about international students.

Immigration Minister Kenney in his visit to Philippines will explain the new laws for live-in caregivers. Many live-in caregivers are from the Philippines; More and more of the immigrants to Canada are from the Philippines. In recent years it has become more difficult overall to gain immigration to Canada. If you on the occupation list or find a suitable job it is still possible to emigrate to Canada. Canada remains one of the most popular immigration destination Countries in the World.