International Roundup

Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board has denied a Venezuelan woman's claim for refugee status because she is overweight, saying her size does not qualify her for special status under the Board's Gender-Related Persecution guidelines.

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Immigration officials in Finland say the number of illegal entrants have doubled in the first half of this year compared to number of those who tried to enter the country without valid documents during the same period last year. The majority caught attempting to cross the border illegally came from the former Yugoslavia, followed by Iraq, Turkey, Bulgaria and Somalia. At the same time, the number of applicants seeking political asylum in Finland is slightly falling from last year's figures.

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Belgium's foreign population constitutes 8 percent of the country's population, at 850,077, but it has decreased by over 50,000 over the past three years, in sharp contrast to several other European countries. According to a study by the National Institute for Statistics, the country's number of foreign residents shrunk by 53,000 between 1998 and 2003. The Institute said it would carry out further studies to determine the cause of the population decrease.

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According to Thailand's Bangkok Post, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has ordered National Police Chief Pol Gen Sant Suratanont to "come down hard" on corrupt immigration officials who may have allowed terrorists into the country. Pol Gen Sant said at least three immigration policemen at one checkpoint would be fired and another 20 were awaiting transfers to "inactive posts."

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Migrationwatch UK, a British think tank, recently warned it expects a surge of new immigrants to be four times greater than the government has publicly stated, after the European Union expands next May. According to a study by the group, at least 40,000 migrants a year will begin arriving from countries such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, calling the government's lower figures of between 5,000 and 13,000 "simply not credible."