Asylum seekers’ desperate wait at Home Affairs office Applicants wait for weeks for papers to be renewed

Source: Groundup, 10/04/2017

Every day, dozens of asylum seekers queue outside the regional Home
Affairs office at Customs House in Cape Town to get their temporary
permits renewed. Most of them are unsuccessful.


The Home Affairs branch only services applications for asylum
status.

The site is marked by high fencing topped with
barbed wire, forcing applicants to queue just off the premises under a
lifted section of the N2. There are no restrooms. Vendors have set up
shop selling warm drinks and food to applicants who will wait all
day.


When GroundUp visited the site last Thursday, dozens of people were
queuing.


“You stand in a queue from five o’clock and after standing in a queue
they open around eight,” Pierre*, a 37-year-old Congolese refugee,
told GroundUp. He had visited Home Affairs twice in the past week with
no success. After opening at eight o’clock they take papers they don
not care who came first or who came last and then they go
inside.


Refugees say Home Affairs personnel take the temporary permits of
everyone in the queue but then call only five to ten applicants into
Customs House over the course of the whole day. The overwhelming
majority must wait outside the building until the late afternoon when
the departments workers re-emerge to return their documents with no
decision often citing “missing files.


Those who leave without new permits are not given any document to show
that they applied. Yet without the extension of their permits asylum
seekers are technically in South Africa illegally and risk
deportation.


All the refugees GroundUp spoke to on Thursday had renewed their
permits at the Customs House facility in Cape Town in the past and did
not understand the delays.


They are looking for our files from morning to evening, but everything
is in the system said Barbara* a 32-year-old Zimbabwean refugee. Why
do they still want a file? Even when they get the file when they want
to renew your paper they will just take your old paper and say put
your finger here. Once I put my finger down everything will show all
my information is in the system.
I am illegal said Michel* a 39-year-old Congolese refugee who had been
returning to the Customs House facility for over a month. If I get
caught by police I am going to get locked up and if I get locked up I
am going to present my document and they are going to say well it is
been expired for the last five weeks.
Refugees may also lose their rights to education, healthcare and
employment once their papers expire. Their bank accounts may be frozen.
When you go to the clinic they ask you where your papers are and they
check the date and see it is expired said Ahmed* a 29-year-old Somali
refugee who has been in South Africa for six years. They cant help you
because you don not have proper papers.
Marie* a 33-year-old Congolese refugee whose papers had been expired
for nearly five weeks said this was affecting the care of her
four-year-old diabetic son. She had been forced to take out two loans
to pay rent and buy sugar-free food and insulin for her son.
All we ask is for our papers to be renewed so that we can go look for
a job she said.
Marie said Home Affairs representatives had returned her papers with
no updates again at the end of the day on Thursday. Without
explanation they told her to return on 11 April to try again.
She likened the bureaucratic process at Home Affairs to her former
home in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is like I am
just in the same situation.
If there was peace and stability back home there would be no point in
us being here said Michel. I fled from persecution but some days I
feel like I would be better back home.
Thabo Mokgola a Home Affairs spokesperson denied that rate of
processing was as slow as claimed. He said that the number of asylum
seekers made it impossible for them all to be accommodated in the
building at the same time. He also said issues regarding the filing of
asylum seekers information had been noted and that measures were in
place to resolve the issue in due course. He invited applicants
experiencing challenges to escalate the matter with Home Affairs staff.