The Y-Axis Blog

Foreign workers and students from outside the European Union will have to pay £50 as ‘migrant tax’ when they arrive in Britain to help ease the impact of their stay on public services.

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16 Mar 2009, 0317 hrs IST, IANS 
 
LONDON: Squeezed by tighter immigration rules, caterers and restaurants serving Indian food in Britain say they need a specialized curry college to save an industry facing “catastrophe”.

A London School of Curry is being proposed by leaders of a 3.5 billion-pound industry who say a new points-based immigration system is making it hard to source qualified chefs who can cook an Indian meal.

Under the points-based system, chefs imported from South Asia not only have to know their cooking skills but also be high earners and possess formal qualification besides a good knowledge of English. Restaurants found flouting rules face stiff fines and immigration department has raided many eating places in Britain recently. (more…)

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) March 16, 2009 — The Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program (AINP) allows H1B workers who are currently employed in an H1B position that is listed as an occupation of high pressure can qualify for Permanent residency with no job offer or employer requirement.

To qualify for this program, an H1B worker must meet the following basic criteria:
1. A Candidate must demonstrate a clear ability and intention to live permanently in Alberta;

2. A Candidate must be currently working in the United States and possess a valid visa in one of the following temporary skilled worker visa categories: H1-B, H1-B1, H-1C, E-3 at the time the AINP makes a final decision on the application; (more…)

Mon Mar 16, 2009 3:56am EDT By Rob Taylor for Reuters 

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia will cut its intake of migrants for the first time in a decade, the government said on Monday, amid concern that skilled foreign workers could stoke resentment by taking jobs at a time of rising unemployment.

 With a recession looming and the center-left government expecting unemployment to reach 7 percent by mid-2010, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the intake of skilled migrants would be reduced by about 14 percent. 

Australia goes to the polls in late 2010 and immigration has been a charged issue in past polls, particularly following economic downturn. (more…)

Mon, Mar 16 11:21 AM

Wellington, March 16 (DPA) New Zealand is not likely to follow Australia in cutting immigration to protect local jobs during the current recession, Prime Minister John Key indicated Monday.

‘New Zealand needs skilled migrants to grow,’ he said under questioning at his weekly news conference.

‘We have a skills deficit and while that may abate slightly because of the downturn in the economy and growing unemployment, we still need to make sure we have got enough skills to grow our economy and develop further,’ Key said.

He said New Zealand had a target of about 45,000 skilled immigrants a year and ‘while it’s always possible that the minister may recommend some changes, it’s not something that’s top of mind at the moment’.

Australia’s Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced Monday that its skilled migration programme would be clipped by 14 percent, or 18,500 jobs, over the next three years. The total number of immigrants, which has doubled over the past decade, will be reduced from 133,500 this year to 115,000 next year.

Key noted that Australia’s immigrant intake had increased much more rapidly than New Zealand’s.

1 Mar 2009, 1713 hrs IST, IANS  

LONDON: Chinese, Bangladeshi and Indian children in Britain are racing ahead of working-class white children at school because their families place more value on education, a key British government adviser was quoted saying Sunday. 

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WASHINGTON: As many as 100,000 Indians and an equal number of Chinese will return to their native countries in the next three to five years, a move that will greatly boost their economies and undermine technological innovation in America, a new US study warns.

 The study on immigration by a team at Duke, Harvard and Berkeley universities led by Vivek Wadhwa, an Indian-American technology entrepreneur turned academic, says “America’s loss is the world’s gain”.

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3 Mar 2009, 1415 hrs IST, PTI 

LONDON: A grocery owned by an Indian-origin shopkeeper in the UK has been closed down after health inspectors found mouse droppings near food and other unhygienic instances in the shop.

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