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The UAE’s Ministry of Labor announced plans to use online filing system to speed up the application process for work permits across the country.

In the existing system, a representative from the company must go to the ministry’s physical location to apply for a work permit, a process that unnecessarily consumes time. The new system, on the other hand, will enable applicants to submit all documents electronically. Moreover, companies will be able to process the work permits through a software that they can buy, or use at selected service centers.

According to The National, Humaid bin Deemas, the executive director for Labour Affairs at the ministry, said we want to make sure that procedures will not form obstacles for any future changes in the criteria for the work permit and this move will work towards that end. It will also enable the ministry to concentrate more on formulating policies rather than spending time on mere procedures.

The system has been already introduced to companies that have more than fifty employees since the beginning of last year. However, the ministry plans to do a nationwide roll-out in the next period. Bin Deemas said in a press conference that the overall number of permits issued electronically until the end of August 2010 was 530,000 and the number of establishments that benefited from the service was 111,000. According to the Ministry of Labor, the move to an electronic system will reduce the time it takes to receive a primary application response from four days to four hours.

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On Monday in St. Petersburg Korea’s Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun reached a temporary agreement with his Russian counterpart which will ease immigration restrictions on Korean
entrepreneurs working in Russia. The agreement will reportedly shorten the number of days it takes for Russia to issue a working visa as well as change the current rule that requires even short-term visitors to register a home address.

The understanding was reached during the Korean minister’s 12-day five-country tour of G20 member countries to fine-tune Korea’s plans for the November G20 summit.

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Bosnia is hopeful the EU will take a decision this December to exempt Bosnian citizens from needing a visa to enter the EU, the country’s deputy foreign minister has said. Speaking at Georgetown University in Washington DC, on 17 September, Ana Trisic-Babic said that while the formal decision by the European Parliament and EU Council of Ministers still had to be taken, she had learned informally that the visa waiver was likely to come soon. It will be a great relief to the country, which has fallen behind its Balkan neighbours in the race to join the EU due to disagreements between its constituent Bosniak, Serb and Croat communities over how the state should function. Trisic-Babic noted that only 700,000 out of Bosnia’s four million citizens relied solely on their Bosnian passports. Others manage to travel visa-free to the EU by using passports from Serbia, Croatia or other countries that are visa exempt.

“There is no alternative to us than joining the EU,” she stressed. Noting how preoccupied the EU has been with internal, constitutional issues, such as forging a common foreign policy, she suggested “we have been left behind a little” and was looking to the US once more for its support. She claimed “the EU is not a carrot anymore for us to do reforms because it is so far away”. Failure to reform its ethnically-based police force has been a notable obstacle hindering Bosnia’s path to the EU. Commenting on Turkey’s new involvement in Bosnia, she said Bosnians were split on this, with Muslim Bosniaks interested but Christian communities irritated. On Kosovo, she said Bosnia would not recognise its independence “for a long time” and would follow whatever Serbia and Kosovo agreed.

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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.

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The Southern Island province of Hainan is now the most accessible Island in China, thanks to new regulations introduced by the Chinese government. The newly introduced visa exemptions, will grant passport holders from 27 countries including Australia and New Zealand unparalleled access to Hainan.

The first exemption is a ‘Free Landing Visa,’ targeted mainly at groups, which is the first in China to allow travellers free access in and out of Hainan Island without a visa. The second exemption is a special Landing visa perfect for individuals or couples and can be acquired on arrival of any airport of Hainan. The free Landing Visa entitles travellers to stay in Hainan for up to 15 days free, provided that they enter in and out of Haikou or Sanya international airports.

The Special Landing Visa policy has also been seen as a landmark for all travellers as it provides travellers with the easiest method of obtaining a visa in China. On arrival at any airport in Hainan, travellers must simply go to the visa station before customs to process, it normally takes 10 minutes and costs just RMB200(Approx $30AUD), compared to the $80 and a trip to the Chinese Consulate. This visa is also valid for 15 days, but can be extended at any of police station in China for up to a two-month period.

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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.

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The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved an agreement with the government of Israel on waiver of visa requirements for persons using the passport of citizen or official passports of Ukraine and Israel.

Thus, this intergovernmental agreement, signed on July 21, took effect in Ukraine. The instrument stipulates that citizens of Ukraine and Israel may stay in another country without obtaining a visa up to 90 days.

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The Norwegian-Russian agreement on visa-free travel for people living in the border area will be signed when Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visits Oslo on November 2nd. Speaking at the joint press-conferance with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Murmansk today, Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg confirmed that the deal will be signed soon, but he did however not confirm the date.

Norway share a 196 km long border with Russia, and the negotiation regarding visa-freedom for the people lining in a 30 km zone on each side of the border has been under way since Sergey Lavrov visited northern Norway in the spring 2008. The agreement was first supposed to be signed during Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s visit to Oslo in April, but the last few obstacles were then not solved. One of the problematic issues was regarding non-Norwegian citizens living within the Norwegian part of the border zone. The Russian position was first that only Norwegian citizens should be allowed to get the right to travel without visa. But, the Schengen-agreement says all Schengen-citizens should have the same rights. This issue is now solved and other Schengen-citizens that have lived longer than three years in Kirkenes will be included for visa-free border travel.

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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.

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Britain is handing out passports to more foreign nationals than any other EU country. In one year, the number of citizenship applications rubber-stamped by the last government was almost a quarter of those issued across all 27 EU member states. From 2002 to 2008, the latest period for which full figures are available, the total number of approvals by Home Office officials was 1,008,500.

Eurostat, the EU’s statistics authority, said this figure outstripped even Germany and France, which have larger populations. Once granted citizenship, people have full access to housing, benefits and the jobs market.

Immigration Minister Damian Green said: ‘These statistics show why we must tighten our immigration system and look to be more selective about who we give British citizenship to.

While it is important that we attract the brightest and the best to ensure strong economic growth, uncontrolled permanent migration places unacceptable pressure on public services.

In addition to issuing the highest cumulative number of passports, Britain topped the league table in three individual years. In 2007, the 164,500 passport approvals was the equivalent on 23 per cent of the EU total. Over the entire seven-year period, they accounted for 20 per cent of those given out.

Labour repeatedly promised to make the citizenship rules tougher, but by the time it left government, the numbers were rising sharply. The Eurostat report stops at 2008. But, in the following year, Home Office figures show the government granted 203,790 passports.

Britain has the third largest number of foreign citizens living here – behind only Germany and Spain. The total of 4,020,800 consists of 1,614,800 people from inside the EU who – because of free movement directives – do not require a visa to live in the UK.

During the election campaign, Labour claimed there were equal numbers of workers entering and leaving the UK.

In reality, Eurostat says there were just 287,600 UK nationals filling jobs elsewhere in the European Union by autumn 2008. Yet there were 1,020,000 citizens from other Euro countries taking posts in the economy here. Earlier this week, Mr Green said that – as part of his plan to halve net migration – he wanted to make it harder for non-EU nationals to settle permanently in the UK.