DAN BROTMAN: I’m not wanted in SA

Source: Business Live, 02/07/2018

Home affairs’ policy of effectively deterring skilled immigration
comes at a great cost to SA. Why doesn’t the business community speak
out?
I recently returned from Berlin, where I took some of SA’s top
property financiers to explore why Germany’s capital city has become
the most profitable residential property market in the world.
From tech entrepreneurs to small business owners, it became apparent
that Berlin’s economic revival is due largely to its ability to
attract skilled entrepreneurs, freelancers and software developers
from across the globe. Investors we met recalled that as recently as a
decade ago, Berlin was not viewed as a desirable city in which to live
because it lacked industry as a result of it being destroyed during
World War 2 and then divided between East and West during the Cold War.
We met brilliant immigrants throughout the week, such as a Canadian
ex-McKinsey consultant building a blockchain-based real estate trading
platform, a Spaniard revolutionising the green energy sector and two
Israelis who founded a deep-tech venture capital fund.
They came to Berlin due to its affordable, high-quality lifestyle and
Germany’s liberal immigration policies. We were told that Berlin has
become the biggest European beneficiary of the 2009 financial crisis,
and Brexit. Skilled southern Europeans and UK residents are flocking
to the city to participate in Germany’s booming economy and experience
the city that the World Economic Forum recently described on its
website as the `best city for millennials`.
I contrast what I saw in Berlin with how skilled immigrants, including
myself, are treated in SA. I recently met automotive professional Raj
Gusain, whose citizenship application was approved last May. As India
does not permit dual citizenship, he, his wife and SA-born son were
told by the home affairs department to renounce their Indian
citizenship before the naturalisation ceremony was to be held the
following month.
They were meant to be stateless for only a few weeks between
renouncing their Indian citizenship and taking the oath as new SA
citizens. However, the ceremony was postponed twice and never
rescheduled, resulting in them being rendered stateless for more than
a year. This meant the family was unable to travel to New Delhi to say
goodbye to Raj’s mother right before she passed away.
My own experience fighting to obtain SA citizenship has left me
questioning my future here
My own experience fighting to obtain SA citizenship has left me
questioning my future here. Home affairs lost my citizenship
application in 2016, and the following year unlawfully rejected it on
the basis of an arbitrary regulation that the high court in Cape Town
recently confirmed was inconsistent with the constitution.
The company I co-founded has taken hundreds of SA businesses overseas
to provide them with exposure for global expansion, in addition to
creating employment for South Africans. I pay personal and corporate
taxes and take nothing from the state. It boggles my mind that the
department would want to block an eligible, law-abiding, job creator
such as myself from obtaining citizenship, while waiving all
requirements for the Gupta family.
I work with some of the country’s top corporates, including banks,
insurance and medical companies. What strikes me is that I am often
the only person in their head offices with a foreign accent.
This means these companies are hiring only from a limited pool of
individuals who attended a handful of local universities.
A colleague’s foreign life partner, who holds a master’s degree in
organisational psychology from a British university, has been
repeatedly told by private-sector employers they will not even
consider her job application due to her nationality, despite the fact
that she has the legal right to work in SA.
I have spent significant time at Silicon Valley-based companies, which
are staffed by bright minds from all over the world. I question how
SA’s private sector plans to be globally competitive when it overlooks
talented foreign nationals.
US big business is vocal on immigration reform. Over the past two
weeks, business titans such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple
CEO Tim Cook have been personally outspoken on the Trump
administration’s implementation of a policy that separates
undocumented children from their parents on the US-Mexico border. Cook
believes Apple can be a `constructive voice` on the situation, and
Microsoft released a statement calling for the `administration to
change its policy and Congress to pass legislation ensuring children
are no longer separated from their families`.
In the eight years I have lived in SA, I have not once seen a large
business organisation challenge government for its inhumane and
economically detrimental immigration policies.
If home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba continues to deter skilled
immigration and the private sector does not start engaging on
immigration reform, we can expect young SA professionals and their
foreign counterparts to take their skills to places that embrace
globalisation and entrepreneurship, including, but not limited to, Berlin.
• Brotman is an American-born Israeli entrepreneur based in
Johannesburg. He applied for SA citizenship in April 2016 and is still
waiting for his application to be finalised.