Opinion: Immigration notes from all over

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Think we’ve got too many furriners in this country? Check out what the furriners themselves have to put up with:

Italy: Berlusconi government may be backing away from tough new immigration enforcement — under pressure from what AFP calls an ‘ironic’ alliance (oh yeah?) between the Catholic Church and an ex-communist president. Rome also gives Spain the fig after the deputy Spanish prime minister critizes Italy’s anti-immigrant mood.

Canada: New Democrats say they’ll use every trick in the book to block changes that would give our neighbor to the north’s immigration chief more power to approve and reject pending applications.

Australia: This time it’s the left trying to put the brakes on immigration, as New South Wales Senator-elect Doug Cameron wrings his hands and warns about a coming worker backlash against immigration, citing the United States and United Kingdom as negative examples. ‘In the UK, the British National Party have used this issue of migration to build a support base for an extreme right wing group and I don’t want to see that happen within Australia,’ Cameron says.

New Zealand: The other Down Under coughs up an even weirder story as former head of the Immigration Service Mary Anne Thompson comes under investigation for claiming a doctorate from the London School of Economics that seems to be as fake as Waleed al-Shehri’s visa application. On the plus side, New Zealand seems to be better than we are at dealing with errant immigration officials: Thompson resigned last week after the story came to light.

Wait a second: We’ve got Italians, Kiwis and Italians growing Kiwis? Confusion like this is why we need comprehensive immigration reform now!