The European Union's top court has ruled that non-EU nationals married to EU citizens are entitled to live in their spouse's country.
The court overruled a law in the Republic of Ireland, which grants residency only to those who have previously lived in an EU member state.

The European Court of Justice had studied the cases of four non-EU nationals married to Irish citizens.
It said the Irish refusal of residence permits contradicted an EU directive.
"The right of a national of a non-member country who is a family member of a Union citizen to accompany or join that citizen cannot be made conditional on prior lawful residence in another member state," the ruling said.

"The (EU) Directive applies to all Union citizens who move to or reside in a member state other than that of which they are a national, and to their family members who accompany them or join them in that member state."

The case against the Irish justice ministry was brought by four African men married to EU citizens resident in Ireland. The men had been refused residence permits.
The court said the host member state "is, however, entitled to impose penalties, in compliance with the Directive, for entry into and residence in its territory in breach of the national rules on immigration".

Amy Winehouse will not perform at this year's Grammy awards because her US visa application has been rejected by the country's embassy in London.

A statement from her management company did not say why her application has been turned down.

The star, whose hits include Back to Black and Rehab, entered a rehabilitation centre last month a few days after a video emerged that apparently showed her smoking a crack pipe.

She is planning to appeal against the cannabis fine in a Norwegian court later this month.

Winehouse called off a series of concerts and appearances at the end of last year after reportedly being treated for drug addiction.

Dec. 14, 2007
REYKJAVIK, Iceland - Iceland's government has asked the U.S. ambassador to explain the treatment of an Icelandic tourist who says she was held in shackles before being deported from the United States.

The woman, Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl, 33, was arrested Sunday when she arrived at JFK airport in New York because she had overstayed a U.S. visa more than 10 years earlier.

Lillendahl, 33, had planned to shop and sightsee with friends, but endured instead what she has claimed was the most humiliating experience of her life.

She contended she was interrogated at JFK airport for two days, during which she was not allowed to call relatives. She said she was denied food and drink for part of the time, and was photographed and fingerprinted.

On Monday, Lillendahl claimed, her hands and feet were chained and she was moved to a prison in New Jersey, where she was kept in a cell, interrogated further and denied access to a phone.

She was deported Tuesday, she told reporters and wrote on her Internet blog.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir told U.S. Ambassador Carol van Voorst that the treatment of Lillendahl was unacceptable.

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"In a case such as this, there can be no reason to use shackles" Gisladottir said. "If a government makes a mistake, I think it is reasonable for it to apologize, like anyone else."

Van Voorst has contacted the officials at JFK airport and asked them to provide a report on Lillendahl's case, Gisladottir said.

A study of how Europe integrates immigrants has exposed wide variations in the welcome foreign workers receive.

The five states with the largest immigrant populations - the UK, Spain, Germany, Italy and France all ranked in the top half of the table, with Italy coming out best. [..]

Sweden was also judged best at giving migrants the right to stay for the long-term, by having what researchers found to be a fair, simple and transparent system.

The UK scored highly in this category and also in the related area of naturalisation - however it was criticised for a special law introduced to rescind nationality, a power used only once so far against a terrorism convict.

Ireland, in contrast, scored worst on long-term residence partly because researchers said migrants' rights to settle were discretionary and related to employment, rather than time spent in the country and links put down.

She argues that Ireland invited immigrants to come and work, without giving any thought to their wider impact.

"We saw them essentially as units of labour," she says. "We didn't see them as people with social and community needs.

"The planning and infrastructure wasn't put in place." [..]

In fact, the percentage of immigrants here rose faster in 10 years than it did in Britain over half a century. [...]

In fact the signs of that turbulence are already apparent. The most thorough European survey of attitudes to immigration showed that Irish people were averagely well-disposed to foreign workers, neither unusually welcoming nor unusually hostile compared to other EU countries.

But ask opinion on a Dublin street corner, and you will hear plenty of individuals whose attitude is decidedly resentful.

"They take the money they're earning back out of the country," I was told by one local. "The Irish economy is losing."

Twenty per cent of people living in Canada are foreign-born, a proportion second in the world only to Australia, new census data reveal.

The 2006 census counted more than 6m foreign-born people out of Canada's population of 31.2m, the highest ratio of immigrants since the 1930s.

The immigrant population grew four times as fast as the Canadian-born population between 2001-2006.

Nearly 60% of the newcomers came from Asia and the Middle East. [...]

n 1971, Europeans accounted for 61.6% of immigrants, while in 2006 they accounted for 16.1% of recent immigrants - the second-largest group. [...]

People speaking neither French nor English as their native language now make up 20% of the total population, the highest recorded in the recent past.

More than 100 workers at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport have been found with fake security passes, officials have said.
Authorities said 110 of the badges issued to a contracting company did not match their owners.

A total of 23 illegal immigrants were arrested and accused of using the fake badges to work in secure areas.

Fri Nov 2, 8:47 AM ET

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A man in Sweden who was angry with his daughter's husband has been charged with libel for telling the FBI that the son-in-law had links to al-Qaeda, Swedish media reported on Friday.

When the husband refused to stay home, his father-in-law wrote an email to the FBI saying the son-in-law had links to al-Qaeda in Sweden and that he was travelling to the US to meet his contacts.

He provided information on the flight number and date of arrival in the US.

The son-in-law was arrested upon landing in Florida. He was placed in handcuffs, interrogated and placed in a cell for 11 hours before being put on a flight back to Europe, the paper said.

The FBI contacted Swedish intelligence agency Saepo, which discovered that the email tipping off the FBI had been sent from the father-in-law's computer.

The father-in-law has been charged with aggravated libel.

He has admitted sending the email, but said he didn't think "the authorities were so stupid that they would believe anything. But apparently they are."

He said he "couldn't help the US authorities' paranoid reaction".

The 17 percent decline in US tourism since September 11th, 2001 has had a devastating effect on the economy, costing nearly $100 billion (200,000 jobs, 16 billion in tax revenue). Visitors to the US from around the world rank the border procedures as among the worst on earth.

"What affects travel and tourism affects our economy and our image around the world. Travel and tourism is the face of America, whether it's people coming here or Americans going elsewhere," he said.

"It's clear what's keeping people away in the post-9/11 environment: it is the perception around the world that travelers aren't welcome," Freeman told AFP.
"Travelers around the world feel the US entry experience is among the world's worst,"

Last year, only 56 percent of Britons had a positive opinion of the United States compared with 83 percent in 2000, the Pew Global Attitudes report for 2006 shows.
Thirty-nine percent of French people saw the United States in a positive light last year, compared with 62 percent in 2000.
In Turkey 12 percent had good things to say about the United States last year -- 40 percentage points down on 2000.

IF: you are a company employee, and sponsored, and go back to your home country, get married, guess what? Your spouse will be here in less than 6 weeks. Through the state department. IF: you are a foreign worker, that a company has requested, you are right here on US soil in 2-6 weeks. If you are a US citizen, work here, live here, you have to wait for months? This process isnt about security, it's about money and that our lawmakers have put families last.

Under Reagan, it took 6 weeks to bring your spouse or children here. Under the administrations that followed, it takes a few weeks to bring employees here and months to keep your family together.