Weekly News Roundup

This week's news roundup covers the aftermath of the failed reforms US Immigration policy initiative as well as covering further developments on the tragedy of the missing migrants and the EU response to this new scandal. Also a story on possible inequalities in the UK immigration system for skilled migrants is included:

• The Financial Times discusses the perplexing political issues with both Democrats and Republicans over the lack of support for real reform of US Immigration Policy. FT states that in reality no one fully supported the new policy, or if they did support it, perhaps they did not think it would actually be successful. To see this interesting commentary see the link to the June 12th article here.
• The EU and the EU Commissioner for Migration, Franco Frattini are facing many questions regarding the death of 27 migrants who spent 3 days sitting in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea with no assistance from the EU (see last week's Update). The responsibility and legal obligations of the EU and its member states to protect illegal migrants has become a very heated issue among member states, as some have more control over resources than others, while certain states like Spain and Malta absorb much of the burden in finding and protecting illegal migrants. For a further discussion see the Reuters article here.
• Immigration reforms in the UK since 2003 seek to qualify applicants for citizenship based on skills, age, education and previous earnings as opposed to family links. Recently there has been some controversy as retroactive rules which apply to skilled migrants who came before the programme are said to not comply with the UK's race equality assessment measures which gave a failing grade to the new highly skilled migrants programme (HSMP) that has been in effect since 2003.  See the Guardian article here.