I wish to thank the Chairman of the Portfolio Committee for
the opportunity offered to me and my Department to address this
Committee on matters relating to the Immigration Bill. The
process of bringing this Bill into reality has been a very long
and often painful one and I am pleased that we are finally seeing
its end. I am very heartened by the strong commitment publicly
made by the Speaker and the Chairman of Committees indicating
that the Immigration Bill will be passed by Parliament before the
end of this present term.
The passing of the Immigration Bill will complete a long process
which began with our first democratic elections of 27 April 1994.
Since then, this Parliament has overhauled each governmental line
function and brought about a comprehensive reform in each field
of legislation. The Aliens Control Act, apartheid's last Act, is
the last vestige of our legislation which still reflects the
mindset, the policies and the orientations which were prevalent
before 27 April 1994. Therefore, at the outset, I wish to
congratulate members of this Committee for being those who closed
the chapter on our past by introducing into the new South Africa
the last of those measures in the package of major legislative
and administrative reforms which were necessary to make the
spirit of our democratic Constitution a living reality in all
fields of legislation and administration.
The Immigration Bill before you was first published on 15
February 2000, even though I circulated preliminary copies of the
first rough drafts of this Bill to this Committee when I met with
you in October 1999. The framework of the Bill before you is not
that dissimilar from the one which was published and distributed
then, except that the notion of migration control being embodied
in a distinct statutory body known as the Immigration Service has
been expunged on the basis of Cabinet resolutions.
In addition, the version tabled before Cabinet has received the
benefit of hundreds of amendments and refinements which took
place in an extremely long process of public consultation which
included a 90 day period of public comments, extensive
interdepartmental consultation and an extremely laborious Cabinet
process inclusive of extensive interdepartmental and
inter-ministerial scrutiny and a full day Cabinet workshop. The
Bill was also extensively considered and negotiated in Nedlac and
many of the amendments made before its submission to Cabinet and
during Cabinet deliberations were the direct product of the
negotiations which took place in Nedlac.
Furthermore, as many of you who attended will remember, the
formulation of the Bill received the benefit of an international
consultative conference held in July 2000. Between July and
August 2000, the Bill served in Cabinet where it received about
80 amendments and refinements. It was then left in abeyance
requiring further reflection and it was again deliberated on by
Cabinet at the beginning of this year and over two months leading
to its final tabling in Parliament. Throughout this process, the
Bill received extensive public debate and scrutiny. In fact, in
order to enhance transparency and public participation, I
instructed that each version of the Bill being debated in Cabinet
be published on our web site. The Bill was formally tabled in
your Portfolio Committee in June 2001 and formally introduced in
your Committee on August 23, being then reintroduced with one
single amendment on 21 October.
I understand that during the past three months this Committee has
read the Bill with great attention and in great detail, which
absolves me from having to discuss the actual content of the
Bill, which is now well known to all of you. This also enables me
to present to this Committee a broader policy perspective on the
Bill. Before focussing on the details of the Bill it may be
necessary to clarify the new type of relationship between the
function of migration control and other line functions it
establishes, and related aspects of their policy formulation.
Migration control relates to the determinations of the conditions
under which foreigners may enter and sojourn in the Republic,
either temporarily or permanently, or may become citizens. Only
partially, does it set forth the conditions of what foreigners
may or may not do within the Republic, as marginal exceptions to
the general policies set out by other departments. For instance,
migration control may set the policy that foreigners may not work
in the Republic unless specifically authorised. When in the
Republic, foreigners will conduct activities of work, tourism,
education, business, investment and medical treatment. However,
it is not the function of migration control to develop any
policies in labour matters, education, tourism and trade and
industry.
The Bill has been drafted to ensure that migration control has
but a minimal impact on the formulation of policies which are the
prerogatives of other departments. In the past, especially during
the apartheid era, a strong and highly discretionary Department
of Home Affairs had wide ranging powers and latitude to formulate
significant aspects of tourism, labour, and investment policies
through the exercise of its migration functions. The Bill
establishes a professional line function which operates on the
basis of simple and objective criteria which are limited to the
issuance of permits for foreign workers, foreign tourists,
foreign investors and foreign businessmen and visitors.
The Bill ensures that foreign workers are employed within South
Africa at the same terms and conditions applicable to our
nationals. However, it is not the purpose of migration to
determine what such terms and conditions may be. The Bill seeks
to reach beneath the level at which policy formulation takes
place in respect of matters which may be impacted by the presence
of foreigners within South Africa. Obviously, a perfect
separation is not possible. For instance, provision is made that
student visas be made available for foreigners who are enrolled
in institutions of learning within the Republic. However, the
criteria for their admission in public institutions of learning
will need to be determined by the Department of Education, which
will establish whether foreign students should have the same
access as our nationals, or a quota should be reserved for them.
This decision will be made within the management of the
educational resources of our country. However, the migration
function may assist in recovering the value of public subsidies
in the education of each foreign student if the Department of
Education chooses to pursue this policy option. Therefore, the
Bill makes provision for this eventuality. The same applies in
respect of medical treatment in public facilities; thereby
registering that South Africa is becoming an increasingly more
attractive destination for foreigners seeking hospital services.
Having sketched what the function of migration control is not,
one needs to focus on what migration control is all about. The
main tasks of migration control are threefold. First is the
issuance of permanent and temporary residence permits to
foreigners who qualify for them. Second, is the detection and
removal of foreigners who are illegally within the Republic.
Incidental to this latter function are the tasks of deterring the
phenomenon of illegal immigration, investigating its general
causes as well as specific cases. Thirdly, migration must deal
with undesirable social phenomena associated with the presence of
foreigners in the country, amongst which is the prevention and
redress of xenophobia. Additional social problems to be dealt
with relate to the cultural adjustment of foreigners and interim
services they may require in the process of their relocation.
These three tasks are provided for in the Bill. In the past, the
great majority of resources and administrative attention of
migration control has been focussed on the first task, namely the
processing of permits in respect of those foreigners who are
within the system. Little resources have been available for the
second task and illegal foreigners have been dealt with only when
identified as a consequence of their breaching their conditions
of permit or as an incident of their arrest by the police. Little
capacity existed for actual law enforcement, especially in
respect of the large number of illegal foreigners who never
become part of the system because they cross into South Africa at
places other than points of entry and never become registered
within the system through which permits are issued.
Finally, no specific capacity or resources have been employed in
respect of the third task, which is that of dealing with the
social problems associated with illegal aliens, of which
xenophobia is only one. Therefore, the Bill requires that the
nature of migration control must change and assume different
tasks. To this end, it takes cognisance that migration control is
presently under-funded and is likely to remain under-funded in
the future. Throughout the world, it is noted that scarce
budgetary resources are allocated to migration control.
Therefore, the implementation of the Bill will cause a more
rational allocation of available resources amongst the aforesaid
tasks.
The Bill also seeks to apply the principle of service delivery
within the field of migration, identifying three classes of
recipients of its services, namely: the foreigners to whom
permits must be issued; the nationals who wish permits to be
issued to such foreigners, such as their employers, family
members, business associates or tourist establishments; and, as a
third category, the public at large, which benefits from the
presence of foreigners within the country and wishes to regulate
the presence of illegal foreigners. Therefore, the role of
migration is to issue permits as quickly, efficiently and
objectively as possible and deal with those who do not respect
the conditions of permits.
Accordingly, a new migration function will simplify the issuance
of permits based on objective and simple criteria. The notion is
that of having an objective system of permit issuance which can
be administered without the need for time-consuming discretional
assessments and consultations with other organs of the State or
entities, and can be performed by the officials concerned without
a high degree of specialisation and training. We are aiming at
developing a system in which the officials can review an
application from the viewpoint of completeness, and issue a
permit on the basis of the documentation on their file. Simply
put, the official will need to check whether all the documents
required by law and regulations are part of the application, and
whether their contents fit that set forth in standard forms.
Therefore, the application review process will be fast, objective
and predictable, thereby achieving the sought after improvement
of service delivery. Moreover, this approach will free
administrative capacity presently locked into the processing of
permit applications. This additional capacity will be employed
for the other two tasks of migration control. This approach also
sets the backdrop for an important reform of migration control
contemplated in the Bill. Having simplified permit procedures, it
becomes possible to organise migration control in a more
decentralised fashion. This is essential to enable migration
control to cope with the increasing demands of the future.
The economic and social success of South Africa will reverberate
dramatically on migration control in terms of multiplied work
permit applications, massive influx of tourists and businessmen
and demands from people seeking to settle in South Africa
permanently. This additional work could not be processed within
the present structures. Therefore, the migration function will
primarily be exercised by regional offices. The head office in
Pretoria will be the centre where the activities of regional
offices will be co-ordinated, training will take place and
polices will be developed. At present, a great deal of head
office capacity is employed in the processing of permits. In the
future, head office will not be processing permits, but will
review how permits are processed, develop the relevant policies
and manage the entire system of migration.
Similarly, enforcement activities will take place at the regional
level and will be equally co-ordinated from a viewpoint of
management, training and supervision from the head office.
Regional offices will be both within the Republic and abroad.
Within their context, it will be possible to issue permits in
foreign regional offices such as those presently located in
London and Berlin. Once the system functions properly, and is
effectively managed and supervised, it will also become feasible
to remove some of the administrative measures which were put in
place to address present administrative shortfalls, such as the
requirement that permit applications be lodged from outside the
country and their applicants remain abroad waiting for the
outcome of their application. The Bill makes it possible to
adjust status from within the Republic, which means that a
foreigner who is legally within the Republic may apply for a
different permit. A tourist may, for instance, apply for a work
permit.
The decentralisation at regional level also serves the purpose of
ensuring greater accountability of those who effectively make
decisions on single cases, so that they may be required to answer
for them if they are erroneous and they become the immediate
respondents of both administrative and legal challenges brought
against their decisions. This applies both to the issuance of
permits as well as action taken in pursuance of law enforcement,
such as deportations. The Bill places a new emphasis on the task
of enforcing immigration laws. The Bill espouses the notion of
having immigration officers working within communities, moving
capacity out of offices and away from paper work to place it at
grassroots level. We need to visualise the future of migration
and the presence of foreigners within South Africa within a 21st
century characterised by an enormous ease of movement of people
between countries and large circulations of foreigners for
purposes which one can no longer classify on the basis of rigid
categories.
A country such as South Africa will attract a large number of
foreigners who will often be within the Republic for mixed
purposes, such as tourism and business, or tourism and research,
or sabbaticals, or just to retire as pensioners. The future will
see an increase in the number of foreigners within communities,
which will become increasingly more cosmopolitan. With this
reality in mind, the Bill focuses not so much on the foreigners
themselves, but rather on their activities within the Republic.
The focus of law enforcement is moved away from the foreigners
and their physical presence in our country, and is placed on
their activities.
Therefore, it is not the presence of foreigners per se which will
ever form the object of investigation and law enforcement by
migration, because it would be impossible to operate on that
basis. There is no issue of stopping people who are suspected to
be foreigners in the street. It may happen on occasion and,
surely, migration must have the power to do so, because it is
necessary to the exercise of its functions where the real focus
is placed. But the future of law enforcement places the focus of
enforcement elsewhere. The activities of foreigners are monitored
where it counts, namely in workplaces, learning institutions and
at the interface between government and its citizenry.
Also, in terms of the Bill our Department will need to ensure
that, in a climate where the presence of foreigners in South
Africa will be less regulated, the activities of foreigners can
be adequately regulated and the regulations enforced. Therefore,
migration needs to develop the capacity to routinely inspect
workplaces as well as communities. In doing so, it may request
communities to co-operate with its activities as much as any
other law enforcement agency would require the public to provide
information. These efforts are balanced by the separate task
which the Bill requires migration to undertake, which is that of
educating the public and preventing any instance of xenophobia.
Another important aspect of the new system of migration control
is the need to acknowledge that South Africa is moving towards a
human rights culture shaped by one of the most democratic
constitutions in the world, which applies equally to nationals
and foreigners within the Republic. One of the main
transformations of migration in the future is centred around the
requirement of motivating the decisions taken and providing a
full opportunity for judicial review, during which the rights and
the liberty of those affected, especially foreigners, are
respected, on the basis of a judicialised process which, inter
alia, relies on court warrants.
This is an enormous transformation from the present situation and
puts migration control in a completely new dimension which
requires an enormous amount of additional resources. Simply put,
compliance with the requirements of advanced human rights
protection requires greater capacity, more resources and more
training. It would be almost impossible and hardly conceivable
for this process to take place through a general system of
courts.
For this reason, the Bill proposes the establishment of
Immigration Courts which, only for descriptive purposes, one
might wish to equate with traffic courts, insofar as immigration
officials will be specially trained to appear and present their
cases, thereby minimising the need for prosecution. Judges will
be specialised, and one would expect cases to be heard in a fast
and routine fashion, while providing the full measure of
competent judicial attention. These courts, operating at the
Magistrate's Court level could indeed be Magistrate's Courts,
operating on certain days of the week and provided that the
relevant magistrate has undertaken a qualifying programme of
training.
I must stress that in terms of the Bill, the Minister of Justice
has the total discretion on whether, when and how to establish
such courts, including the possibility of a geographically
staggered and phased-in approach. Therefore, the Bill's provision
for Immigration Courts is a purely enabling provision which will
be implemented when and how the Minister of Justice sees fit. As
separate courts, Immigration Courts do not duplicate the required
judicial and administrative capacity which, in the final analysis
is dictated by the number of cases to be heard, courtroom space
required, and work hours on the side of judges and prosecutors.
These factors remain constant and are not duplicated, while
specialisation reduces the extent to which these factors come
into the equation.
The final aspect of law enforcement and migration relates to
border control. In the Bill, there is no suggestion that border
control should in any way be lessened. On the contrary, the Bill
calls for the tightening of border control by means of
specialised and professional activities under the control of the
Department of Home Affairs but conducted on an interdepartmental
basis and drawing from the resources and contributions of all
relevant line functions. This will finally create the long sought
after co-ordination of the many line functions which directly or
indirectly carry out responsibilities in respect of border
control or at the points of entry, thereby obviating some of the
problems which members of this Committee observed during a recent
visit to points of entry and reported to Parliament. Nonetheless,
it must be restated that more efficient and better co-ordinated
border control by itself cannot be the only solution to the
problem of illegal foreigners in the country and that, by itself,
it will remain ineffective. However, it cannot be neglected.
Border control must dramatically change. Nowadays, borders are no
longer controlled to repel an invading army, and the main concern
of border control is about preventing cross-border illegal
activities, ensuring the payment of tariff duties on entering
goods, and regulating the access of foreigners for purposes of
migration control. These are not functions which can be performed
by the defence forces, nor do they require the full range of
investigative and policing capacity of the police service, which
are the two security services presently mandated to perform
border control. Therefore, future border control will need to
rely on specialised investigative capacity which justifies the
policies set out in the Bill.
One of the more widely debated issues of migration control
relates to work permits. In this respect, two relevant policy
considerations have emerged in the debate. The first is that
which suggests that government should not make work-permits too
readily available, for fear that the easy availability of skilled
and qualified foreign labour may reduce the momentum and
necessity in respect of the training of nationals, especially as
far as our industry as a whole is concerned.
The other relevant policy consideration centres around the need
to provide our economy with the skills and qualifications it
needs to grow. This consideration registers the fact that all
countries are competing for skilled people. For instance, Germany
has launched a programme to acquire tens of thousands of foreign
computer experts who will be allowed to work in that country in
an environment in which conditions for work-permits and permanent
residence have been greatly relaxed. Therefore, in this context,
South Africa competes with some of the most advanced countries,
without being able to provide many of the benefits such countries
offer, which may require our making it even easier for foreigners
to receive work permits.
A further consideration is that of compensating the brain drain
to which South Africa is subject with a brain gain, so as to
enrich South Africa's human resource pool. When considering these
issues, we were faced with a broad variety of options relating to
these considerations, and had to engage in a broad analysis of
comparative experiences, the several aspects of which could
obviously not be set out extensively in the few pages in which
our policy documentation had to be contained. In the end, the
White Paper on International Migration approved by Cabinet on 31
March 1999 created a necessary tie between work-permits and the
training of our nationals through the establishment of a permit
fee intended to be applied towards the training of our nationals.
This approach has been maintained in the Bill.
In order to fully understand the value of this innovative
proposal, one may need to consider its alternatives. The key
question that one needs to ask is how one identifies the type of
foreigners which South Africa as a whole may like, need, or
prefer to have working in South Africa. The Bill develops new and
innovative solutions to foster economic growth and satisfy the
needs that our businesses may have for the acquisition of foreign
human capital and skills. From a business viewpoint, there are
two major facets to the relevance of migration control. The first
relates to the acquisition of foreign workers within an
established business in South Africa. The second relates to the
establishment of a foreign business in South Africa, and includes
intra-company transfers, key personnel and investor's permits.
The difficulty is that, in reality, these two categories are on a
continuum which blurs the differentiating lines.
Similarly, foreigners may come to South Africa to either work or
conduct business, and while there may be clarity at the two
extremes of this spectrum of employees and businessmen, there are
many grey areas in between. The most difficult aspect of reducing
the simple reality of people coming from abroad to conduct
productive activities in South Africa into legal classifications
and differentiations was raised by the issue of skills. It took
three years since 1995, when the public debate on international
migration first began, to bring about policy consensus that we
need to open up the country to the skills our economy needs, as
stated by the President during his State of the Nation address
last year.
Years ago, there were some voices suggesting that we should avoid
satisfying our country's need for additional skills by resorting
to foreigners, so as to avoid reducing the incentive that our
employers should have to train South Africans. The emphasis was
exclusively on brain train rather than brain gain. It was then
realised that a country grows also because of the human capital
it is able to import, and the White Paper developed a mechanism
to maintain a policy connection between brain train and brain
gain. However, stating that we need to let into the country the
skilled people we need, is easy to make from a policy viewpoint,
but difficult to implement in practice. Someone somehow needs to
determine who is skilled, what skills we need and whether such
skills are indeed needed.
There was a strong temptation that government should do exactly
that; that we should classify all the possible skills into
various groups or categories and determine how many of each group
we need at any given time and for each sector of industry. Those
who wish to employ foreigners would need to apply against such
skills and needs auditing. This system would leave unsolved the
issue of whether a foreigner is actually needed in a specific
industry, even when his skills belong to a category for which the
generic need was assessed.
Therefore, it was suggested that each application be accompanied
by a labour certification which showed that no South African was
ready, willing and able to take the position being offered after
such position had been duly advertised. This mechanism would only
prove that the need for such foreigner existed at the time of his
employment and, therefore, it would become reasonable that this
labour certification be repeated when the work permit requires
extension, and that such work permit be issued for a short
period.
This is the skills auditing system against which work permits
would be issued. This possible alternative gives the full measure
of the difficulties the White Paper sought to overcome in
developing something better. Such system would have been even
more complex, discretionary, uncertain and time and effort
consuming than the one presently in use in terms of the Aliens
Control Act. It would have required a huge government bureaucracy
to be implemented. Each business would have been required to list
the skills it presently has and those which it expects to need in
the future. This sophisticated guess-work would then be assessed
through a process of policy review which would have balanced the
needs expressed by the industry with the interests of the State
not to fulfil such needs, so that the training of South Africans
could be promoted. Such system could not work in our present
context, and with the present and future needs of our economy.
The fact is that, in the real world we live in, it is impossible
to classify skills and match them with qualifications. Government
can only read skills through qualifications and determine that if
someone has an engineering degree, he has the skills of an
engineer. We are ill equipped to assess experience, training and
curricula vitae. In the present market place, qualifications no
longer match skills and skills no longer match positions.
Engineers may make good managers. Moreover, the link between
skills and qualifications has been irreparably broken. For
instance, South Africa desperately needs computer specialists
such as web designers, website managers and developers and
programmers, most of whom have precious skills reflected in no
documentable qualification such as a certificate or diploma.
In the end, the employer is best qualified to determine whether
an employee has the skills and qualifications required to perform
certain tasks. Obviously, this statement prescinds from the need
of ensuring that those performing any given task have
qualifications which are certified by our Qualification Authority
as valid to perform such task, as in the case of medical doctors
or engineers. The legal requirements relating to the exercise of
any given activity or profession remain unaltered.
A final problem when dealing with skills is how to determine how
much skill a person needs to have to be the type of person we
need in our country. There might be agreement that a brain
surgeon is sufficiently skilled, and yet we need people who can
operate a certain type of water pump or tractor. Conversely, we
may not need trained astronauts, as we have no space programme.
There are strong segments of industry which also suggest that we
need entrepreneurial skills and this seems to be supported by the
large number of successful small and micro businesses commenced
in our country by foreigners, many of whom are not legal yet may
be providing an appreciable contribution in macroeconomic terms.
Government cannot determine how much skill is enough to cross the
threshold of needed skills.
The new system of migration control envisaged in the Immigration
Bill will rely on employers to determine whether any given
foreigner is required for their business. Having crossed such
important policy threshold, it became imperative that we maintain
a connection with and satisfy two other important and possibly
conflicting policies. The first is that of ensuring that
government maintains control of the process. Relying exclusively
on an employer's statement that the foreigner is needed does not
satisfy such a requirement, nor can government be expected to
conduct an investigation in respect of the accuracy of each
statement so rendered, which would lead us back to cumbersome,
discretionary and lengthy procedures. The second policy
consideration has always been that of maintaining a connection
between the employment of foreigners and the training of our
South Africans.
For this reason, we developed the mechanism of a licensing fee
for foreigners as the only mechanism required to determine
whether a foreigner has skills which are indeed needed in any
given business. The notion is that if someone is willing to pay a
higher premium to employ a foreigner than he would to employ a
South African, then that foreigner is needed. This mechanism also
avoids having to determine the length for which a permit should
be issued, because obviously a person is needed for as long as
one is willing to pay such premium. If at any given time South
Africans become available to fill the position, it would stand to
reason that an employer would shift to using them. Moreover, this
system maintains a policy tie between brain gain and brain train
which is entrenched in our debate. In fact, it is understood that
this licensing fee will be directed to the training fund already
established by the Department of Labour to train South Africans.
From a practical viewpoint, an employer will only need to pay
this periodic licensing fee, which is an additional return, and
certify that a foreigner works at terms and conditions which are
not inferior to those applicable to a South African. This latter
certification can be conducted on a routine basis by the
employer's accountant, indicating that the foreigner is not paid
less than a South African in the same workplace or in a
comparable one. When we introduced this system, the business
community raised a number of concerns to which I have been
sensitive and which led to additional corrections being made and
guarantees put in place. In the end, there have been many
exceptions to a licensing fee.
Just to mention a few of such exceptions, one may point out that
the licensing fee will not apply in respect of corporate permits,
which are those permits which can be negotiated by any large
company or organisation directly with the Department enabling
them to issue a certain pre-agreed number of permits directly
from their human resources offices. This is a unique system which
will add enormous flexibility to satisfying the needs of South
African industry and foreign investors alike. This system also
enables a corporate permit holder to shift work permits between
different foreigners without having to receive approval from the
Department. Obviously, work permits can only be issued once the
Department has certified that each application meets all the
relevant requirements, including police clearance and other
additional information which is part of the constituting elements
which our regulations will prescribe for any and all
applications.
The licensing fee will also not apply to intra-company transfers,
work permits for people of exceptional skills and qualifications,
in respect of people with certain skills within a class which
government may determine from time to time and in respect of the
renewal of existing permits. It will also not apply either in
respect of foreign investments or entire segments of industry
when so requested by the Departments of Trade and Industry or
Minerals and Energy. The latter case is intended to address
marginal and highly labour intensive industry which may be
relying on foreign labour for their survival, such as certain
segments of our mining industry. Many of these exceptions were
the result of negotiations held in Nedlac with social partners.
Finally, a last important aspect of the new system of migration
control to be mentioned is the involvement of stakeholders in the
actual definition of the details of the system. The actual
features of the system will, to a great extent, depend on the
regulations. For instance, it will be the regulations which will
determine the amount of the licensing fee and obviously, it will
make a difference whether such licensing fee is higher or lower,
or is uniform across the board rather than being differentiated
for each category of industry, possibly across the divides of the
Sectoral Education and Training Authorities. Similarly, the
entire system of investors permits will vary substantially on the
amount of prescribed investment which qualifies for an investors
permit.
The Bill has made provision for these critical decisions to be
made by an Immigration Board in which both government and
stakeholders of civil society would be represented. In terms of
the Bill, Government would have control of such a Board, but the
inputs of civil society within it would have been powerful. In
the original version of the Bill, the Board had an executive
function. However, during the process of review of the Bill by
Cabinet it was then decided that these critical decisions need to
remain within the prerogative of the Minister and that the
Immigration Board, rather than having a decision making power,
would only serve in an advisory capacity. However, the Bill
preserves the guarantee that the regulations can be stricken down
by a court of law when they are found to be arbitrary and
capricious in respect of the inputs received from the public and
stakeholders, which will give great weight to the recommendations
of the Board.
The Board is a crucial element in the structure of the Bill.
Migration control is a function which relies heavily on
interdepartmental co-ordination and calls for a continuing
process of policy formulation. The needs of the country change
and so do our perceptions, and from time to time, it is necessary
to determine how ajar the migration door should be kept. These
types of decisions cannot be entrenched once and forever in the
law and will take place through regulations. However, these
regulations require extensive interdepartmental inputs and
therefore, must be the product of a body which causes various
departments to work together. By including a large number of
representatives of civil society, the Board will also ensure that
policy formulation continues to receive the necessary inputs of
all stakeholders and role players.
The President expressed the hope that Parliament could process
the Immigration Bill before the end of last year, and his hope
was reflected in last year's parliamentary calendar. I now hope
that this Bill can leave Parliament and the reform of migration
control can finally be launched. It must be appreciated by this
Committee that the adoption of new legislation will be but the
beginning of a lengthy process through which the reform of
migration control will finally take place. We will need to change
our regulations, adjust our application forms and other
documentation, restructure our Department and conduct extensive
programmes of retraining. This will take time and massive
efforts. Therefore, the sooner we get our green light and the
necessary mandate from the new legislation, the sooner we will be
in a position to provide the much sought after and much waited
for improvement of our migration control services.
We need this Bill to be passed to begin performing better which,
in the end, is the fundamental task which should unite our
respective efforts.