The Immigration Act of 2002 first came into operation on April 7 2003,
with amendments on July 1 2005, and then on May 26 2014. This is the
country’s single piece of immigration legislation and, all told, the
Immigration Act �` together with its regulations �` amounts to 362
pages. The specific requirements for each category of temporary and
permanent residence applications are listed in the regulations.
Yet, in reality, there exist 125 laws: one for each of the 124 South
African foreign missions where immigration applications are submitted,
and one for the department of home affairs.
It takes a little patience to compare the consular websites of South
Africa’s 124 foreign missions where immigration applications are
submitted.
When doing so, you will note that the list of requirements for
specific visa categories in South Africa’s Immigration Act and its
regulations are almost always divergent from the list posted on
foreign missions’ websites.
South Africa’s foreign mission in Paris, for instance, requires that
critical skills visa applicants present a contract of employment and
their employer’s latest tax returns and company registration
documents. This is not the case at the United Kingdom’s foreign
mission, nor in South Africa itself. Zimbabwean critical skills visa
applicants are routinely required to present their birth certificates,
whereas this is not required by other nationalities. Applying for a
retired person visa in Milan requires proof of valid medical cover,
yet this requirement is categorically reserved for study visas. The
South African embassy in Toronto insists that foreign spouses applying
for a visa with authorisation to work in South Africa must first have
been in possession of a relative visa. This differs from the
Immigration Act.
These differences are detectable from mission to mission, and it is
only a question of degree as to how significant they are. The
consequence is that applications complying definitively with the
Immigration Act are rejected for noncompliance with the whims of the
consular missions and their staff.
The South African white paper on immigration reform, adopted by the
Jacob Zuma Cabinet in 2017, indicates in a footnote on page 35 that
only 30 missions out of 124 are serviced by home affairs officials.
This effectively means that at most locations where foreigners lodge
their applications abroad, the adjudicators on applications
contemplated by South Africa’s Immigration Act are either officials
from the department of international relations and co-operation

�` or
perhaps even staff that are local to the communities in which those
missions exist.
International relations department officials can hardly be regarded as
expert in the substance of our immigration legislation. They are not
educated in immigration law, they have no grasp of South African
immigration policy and no knowledge of jurisprudence on the
interpretation of the Act. How, then, can consular officials clueless
on our immigration rules be expected to decide which foreigners may
obtain work, business or retired person visas?
People applying for business visas at foreign missions, including
foreign investors, are therefore forced to deal with employees who
have neither knowledge of the Immigration Act nor the inclination to
determine complex applications for immigration benefits in terms of
the Act.
It is not uncommon for foreigners who make compliant applications to
have some manner of adverse information contained on their police
clearance certificates. Rarely does this render them “prohibited
persons”, nor people who are subject to be declared undesirable, but
it does require that they are subject to closer scrutiny in terms of
the Immigration Act.
In these and other cases where foreign missions lack adequate
knowledge and expertise to address complex cases such as these,
applicants are instead exposed to walls of deafening ignorance. They
often face adjudicatory authority so arbitrary and subjective that
their applications are destined for a road to nowhere.
South Africa’s immigration system must �` like all systems �` be applied
consistently. Instead, we see chaos by design. Those responsible for
the management of foreign missions are alive to this secret, because
administrative appeals filed as a consequence of a rejection at a
mission rarely see the light of day within any reasonable timeframe.
In the old days under Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, foreign missions
such as those in Bern, London, New York, Washington DC, The Hague and
Berlin used to be showcases of South Africa’s moral high ground and
its hunger for foreign direct investment and talent.
The original thrust of ANC policy in 1994 was to partake in the
international competition for investment and global competitiveness.
What has happened to this? What can explain the degradation of South
Africa’s consular missions into bastions of xenophobia? V.2842

There are fears that more people will be separated by the introduction of a minimum salary level for those wanting UK family visas. Families living in the UK and abroad have raised concerns about what new rules will mean for them as they try to reunite with foreign spouses. In December, the Home Office, which says migration to the UK is too high, announced a package of measures to reduce net migration, following a spike in arrival numbers. V.5318
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An Ethiopian asylum seeker, who does not speak English, claims he was duped by a senior immigration official into paying an admission of guilt fine when he thought he was paying for bail.Two Western Cape High Court judges have condemned the official`s `deplorable` behaviour, set aside the fine, and ordered the immigration official be taken off the case. Tsegaye Esyas claims Annelise van Dyk treated him like an animal which led to him attempt suicide while in police cells. V.5320
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EREMY MAGGS: I want to stay with crime now. Individuals with a criminal record may be faced with significant challenges when seeking employment, I think that’s a given. Here in South Africa, employers may legally exclude an applicant from consideration for a position if having a clean criminal record is what is termed an inherent requirement of the job. That phrase, inherent requirement, is important, but what exactly does that mean, and when can an applicant be lawfully excluded for having a criminal record? V.5321
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As a South African who has adopted a nomadic work lifestyle alongside my wife, Ingrid Lotze, I’ve been an interested observer of South Africa’s snail-pace digital nomad visa (DNV) development process. Despite the optimism surrounding its introduction, the visa seems to miss several crucial marks for digital nomads like us. V.5322
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DA MP says hours lost continue to result in persons being unable to collect their ID documents due to unmanageable queues The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. V.5314
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Home Affairs’ seemingly endless court battles set the department back more than R110-million between April 2023 and the end of February this year. This was revealed in a written parliamentary response by minister Aaron Motsoaledi. He said the department accumulated a litigation bill of R117 692 996.3, higher than the R72 637 944.51 spent the year before. V.5315
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Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) this week revealed that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) has achieved a ground-breaking milestone by processing more than 10 million passengers over a single financial year. This is the highest number of regional and international passengers processed since COVID-19 V.5316
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In recent years, South Africa has seen a significant influx of immigrants from various African countries, as well as other parts of the world. This has raised important questions about the country`s immigration policies and their impact on job creation for both locals and immigrants. The South African immigration system, like many other countries, is a complex and ever-evolving process that aims to balance the country`s economic needs with its social and cultural interests. Let`s take a closer look at how this system intersects with job creation in South Africa. The South African government implemented the Immigration Act of 2002, which outlines the country`s immigration policies and procedures. Under this act, foreigners are required to obtain a visa or permit to enter, work, or study in South Africa. The type of visa or permit required depends on the intended purpose of the individual`s visit and their country of origin. V.5312
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Due to system downtime and load-shedding, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) lost nearly 141,000 hours of Smart ID application and production time between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 financial years. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed this figure in a recent response to questions raised in Parliament by Democratic Alliance MP Adrian Roos. Motsoaledi provided a breakdown of smart ID production and application hours lost to technical difficulties and load-shedding per province for each financial year from 2019/2020. These disruptions hit home Affairs offices in the Eastern Cape the hardest, with over 34,000 hours to rotational power cuts and system downtime. Mpumalanga offices lost the next-highest number of hours at 17 V.5313
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Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has said the public has shown great support for the final White Paper on citizenship, immigration and refugee protection which appeared in the Government Gazette on Wednesday. Briefing the media, he addressed what he saw as a long-overdue need to replace an outdated Citizenship Act, as well as enact proposed changes to existing legislation. V.5306
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