Immigration to Australia

Four people believed to be migrants have been found dead on a crippled boat in the northern Aegean Sea and another 15 survivors have been rescued, Greek authorities said Wednesday.

The boat was located following a 17-hour search and rescue operation by sea and air, after somebody believed to be a passenger on the inflatable dinghy made a distress call to Greek officials late Tuesday.

At least 36 people are dead and dozens missing after a boat carrying nearly 100 suspected migrant workers capsized and sunk in Indonesian waters.
The speedboat was ferrying 93 passengers from Malaysia to Batam, an Indonesian island just south of Singapore, when it sank, local police chief Sam Budi Gusdian said.

Canadian Immigration Minister John McCallum has said visa requirements for Bulgarian and Canadian nationals will be dropped as of next December.

The Canadian government intends to enforce the step as of December 01, 2017, according to a government statement.

Australia's hardline policy on asylum-seekers, who have been pushed back by the boatload and incarcerated in offshore camps, is under pressure as public sympathy for Syrians escaping conflict swells in a nation built on migration.
 

Cambodia received its first batch of asylum-seekers from Australian custody June 4 as part of a widely-criticised deal between the two countries.

The refugees -- three Iranians and one ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar -- were flown into Phnom Penh, the capital of one of Southeast Asia's poorest nations with a weak record for upholding human rights.    

More than 600,000 Turkish citizens abroad have so far voted in the general election, due to take place in Turkey on June 7.

A total of 685,158 Turkish citizens had cast their votes in embassies and consulates abroad as of May 28. Voting first opened on May 8.

Sweden may have narrowly avoided snap elections that would have been dominated by a debate on immigration, but with asylum seekers arriving in record numbers the issue is unlikely to stay off the agenda for long, analysts say.
      

The number of asylum seekers from Afghanistan has increased more than four times in the last year, Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees told Dnevnik.bg.

Since the beginning of the year, a total of 1397 Afghans have been accommodated in the Agency's centers, while their number in 2013 was 310.

Australia is making it easier for skilled workers to seek employment in the country known for its notoriously strict immigration policy, which has resulted in a shortage of experts in a number of professional fields.

3,000 asylum seekers in Serbia so far this year

BELGRADE -- Serbia’s Assistant Commissioner for Refugees Ivan Gerginov said Wednesday that the number of asylum seekers was steadily increasing in the country.

About 3,000 people seeking asylum in Serbia in the first six months of the current year, he explained.