South Africa February 2006 |
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| Shambles at Home Affairs escalates, (Business Day, 2006-02-13):-Following closely on what many observers have described as utter shambles in the last six months of 2005, the home affairs department’s new year has not started off terribly well. On January 16 2006 the Cape High Court handed down a judgment imposing what is now termed a “structural interdict” on the department (Kiliko v Minister of Home Affairs). The court held that the objective of the interdict was to ensure that the department complied with its service delivery and other obligations — in this case to asylum- seekers — and that “... the only manner in which that objective could be achieved is to require [the department] to provide this court with a report in the form of an affidavit ... by not later than May 3 2006 ...” In assessing whether the department had complied with its obligations, the court held that, inasmuch as the deputy director-general of the national immigration branch had claimed the measures the department had taken were adequate, he was “... presumably carried away by his own nebulous grandiloquence”. For most attorneys practising immigration law, the last six months of 2005 was a low point in service delivery in many home affairs’ offices. In July 2005 the Immigration Amendment Act was introduced. By all accounts it has not delivered what was promised. Key provisions of the temporary and permanent residence systems, where the permits are based on quota requirements, have still not been introduced. Stakeholders are now less than impressed by department assurances that the announcement of the quotas is imminent. Prof Wilmot James, chairperson of the minister’s immigration advisory board, told a meeting of the Global Commission on International Migration in Cape Town in December 2005 that while the deputy president may be committed to recruiting sorely needed skills for local authorities from overseas, there is a real risk such people would struggle to get permits to work here. Having failed to think through a number of the practical implications of the new act properly, the department has forced attorneys and immigration practitioners to first apply to the department for a waiver of various prescribed requirements before they can lodge applications. In many instances, waivers applied for in the first week of July 2005 have still not been responded to, without any explanation. In the case of permanent residence applications, the department advised its officials that when people applied for permanent residence on the basis of permanent job offers, the application was not to be accepted until the quotas had been announced. If the department would at least tell this to the public, some companies would be spared the cost of duplicating charges for advertising the post. These advertisements cannot be more than three months old when the application is lodged or else they, and the whole recruitment process, has to be repeated. A further irrationality occurs when foreign minors come to SA to attend school. The regulations state that neither of the parents is allowed to accompany the child or children. The parents must appoint an acting guardian for the duration of the child’s stay in the country. The department has also lost sight of the fact that there is a white paper on immigration. The 2002 Immigration Act sought to capture the white paper’s immigration enforcement strategy. A central feature of that strategy was to put pressure on employers to comply with the law. The rationale was that precisely because there are fewer employers who are more visible than there are undocumented migrants, it would be easier to progressively discourage the “pull” component of migration. But in an internal instruction to its officials the department stated that Parliament’s direction was unenforceable, but no alternative has been debated, much less put in place. In addition, it can frequently take many months to get the ministry or department to answer correspondence. Corruption continues to be a thorn in the side of the department and the public. Stakeholders complain that the department appears unwilling to tackle so-called syndicates and that it focuses instead on the “foot soldiers”. The Immigration Act itself is in serious need of a major overhaul, subject to the development of a coherent immigration policy. Given the importance of a properly managed immigration system for the country’s economic development, we can only hope the department will get to work seriously on at least some of these issues this year. | |
South African Migration Project (SAMP) - Queen's University - http://www.queensu.ca/samp |