Immigration news

MPs have demanded an end to a controversial UK immigration rule that allows for the deportation of immigrants sleeping rough on Britain’s streets. Labour MP, Claudia Webb, led fresh calls for the government to scrap its policy that sanctions a person’s deportation if they are homeless.

 

Under UK immigration rules that came into force on 1 December 2020, sleeping rough can be grounds for the Home Office to refuse or cancel a person’s permission to be in Britain. The Home Office has insisted that it will apply the rule ‘sparingly’. 

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) has told a House of Lords subcommittee that a youth mobility scheme with Europe, similar to those that the UK has with Australia and New Zealand, could form part of a wider solution to the UK’s talent challenge for low-skilled jobs.

 

US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has criticized former US President, Donald Trump, for ‘entirely gutting’ the US immigration system. Mayorkas said: “We are having to rebuild out of the depths of cruelty.”

 

The US immigration system has been branded a COVID-19 super-spreader by a Scientific American report. According to the report, the continued detainment of immigrants in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers has led to some of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the country.

 

It’s claimed that the US immigration system is endangering the lives of immigrants, detention center staff and local communities. Across the US, immigrant advocates had urged the Trump administration to release immigrant detainees to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

According to recent research, foreign workers are leaving the UK at the fastest rate since World War II, adding to the strain on the economy, which has been badly affected by the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit. The research shows that London alone has lost 700,000 people over the past year.  

The consequences of the exodus will prove challenging for the Treasury and landlords while harming Britain’s economic recovery amid what has been described as ‘the worst slump in three centuries.’

A private database containing more than 400 million names, addresses and service records from more than 80 utility companies is being used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to pursue US immigration violators, according to Georgetown Law researchers who made The Washington Post aware of their findings.

 

According to a report published by The Independent, ICE’s use of the database demonstrates yet another example of how government agencies have exploited commercial sources to access information they are not authorized to gather on their own.