International Roundup

Dutch police detained 23 undocumented immigrants on Sunday morning in Zevenbergen and arrested a 39-year-old Estonian truck driver on human smuggling charges.  Ten of the illegal immigrants were found hiding in the truck and police found another 13 elsewhere on the industrial terrain. The 21 men and two women were of Asian ancestry.  A small number of them had Chinese identification documents, but it is not yet certain whether all of them originated from China. It is not yet certain how far the Asians traveled in the Estonian man's truck and investigators are trying to determine if the driver is linked to a human smuggling gang or not. The truck driver is being remanded in custody and will appear before a judge later this week.

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Spain's government has relaxed the rules for an amnesty for undocumented immigrants, a move expected to bring hundreds of thousands of more applications for legal residency.  Already more than 300,000 have applied for legal residency and work permits under a special program that ends on May 7, 2005.  According to the previous rules, an immigrant hoping to be granted residence and work papers had to prove, by means of a specific 'enrolment' document, that he or she was registered as living in a Spanish municipality prior to August of last year. The new rules announced this week will allow immigrants to use other documents to establish residence. Exactly what documents will be accepted has yet to be clarified, leading to confusion.

Since the process began in early February, some 313,000 undocumented immigrants - mostly from Latin America, North Africa and Eastern Europe - have applied, in conjunction with their employers, to receive the amnesty. In order to be granted residence and work permits, a candidate must demonstrate that he or she has a contract for employment in Spain for at least six months. For agricultural and domestic workers, the period is three months.

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