Mashaba urges Dlodlo to act on migrant influx

Source: Times Live, 16/11/2017

Dlodlo and her department have just over a week to detail their plan
to deal with illegal immigrants in Joburg or face court action
The City of Johannesburg said on Thursday that the Department of Home
Affairs’s inaction on illegal immigration had led to “overwhelming
prejudice and hardship” for the city.
The city has given Home Affairs Minister Ayanda Dlodlo until Friday
next week to tell it what it will do to regulate migration in the metro.
Since Herman Mashaba took office as mayor in 2016, the issue of
illegal migration has been of crucial importance to his
administration. Poor migration policy affected financial planning and
budgeting, housing, safety and security and social security, the city
said.
A letter written by the city’s lawyers to the department said the
metro was hampered in its governance and planning responsibilities by
the unknown number of illegal immigrants.
The city said it was groping in the dark and did not know what
budgetary provisions were needed to cater to them.
Space that would ordinarily be occupied by ratepayers was now being
occupied by illegal immigrants. This had worsened the housing
shortage. The city also claimed that crime allegedly committed by
undocumented immigrants was increasing steeply.
The heightened potential for renewed outbreaks of “xenophobic
violence” was increasing the strain placed on the city’s
law-enforcement resources.
If the department did not respond to the letter, the city would take
whatever legal steps were necessary, which could include initiating
proceedings in the high court, the letter said.
Mashaba argued that it was common cause that immigration controls did
not reside within the local government sphere, but in the national
sphere, “more specifically with the mandate of your ministry and
department”.
The ministry is accused of treating the repeated requests of the city
to the three ministers who have served in the portfolio so far in 2017
“with nothing but disdain and disregard”.
Mava Scott, the minister’s spokesman, told Business Day on Thursday
afternoon that Dlodlo’s office had not yet received the letter, but
that they would look at the contents and respond once the office had
received it.