SA Migration International

News Articles

New visa system introduced in South Africa

Source: Businesstech, 08/06/2022

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has introduced a centralised adjudication system for visas. The new system will mean that all long-term visa applications submitted through a South African embassy or high commission are being sent to the Home Affairs head office in Pretoria.
Previously, these applications were adjudicated and finalised by consular officials within the missions, says Moeketsi Seboko, immigration manager at Xpatweb.
“What we know so far is that the purpose of the centralised system is to ensure consistency and uniformity in the application of the Immigration Act and regulations toward the adjudication of visa submissions.
“The implementation of this new system is seen as an attempt by DHA to enhance the integrity of its Immigration Department and to show efforts to align systems in the interest of national security whilst contributing to the recovery of the economy.”
Issues
The Department of Home Affairs had been made aware that there are inconsistencies and arbitrary rules by officials at missions which have led to consular officials requesting non-prescribed requirements for the same visa application, Seboko said.
At times, these requested requirements can change weekly depending on the official receiving the documents, which often results in an inconsistent and unpredictable adjudication process. Although this is not the case with all missions, as some are compliant and enforce the correct visa application processes and procedures, Seboko said.
“We welcome the new system and are of the opinion that with proper and systemic implementation, the centralised system will improve on the effectiveness and uniformity in the adjudication process of long-term visa applications.
“However, like with any structural change, teething problems are expected and are currently affecting expats and their employers around the globe. An example of this is greatly increased processing times of visa applications as a result of a bottleneck due to the vast number of visa application received at the Department of Home Affairs head office from the missions.
“One can only hope that the Department of Home Affairs is being proactive and jumping on implementing measures to mitigate further delays in the release of visa application outcomes and also to increase the staff complement at DHA Head Office to relieve the pressure of the volume of applications received.”
Xpatweb called for a more permanent and robust solution to address the ever-evolving immigration standards.
www.samigtration.com

Search

Latest News

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.... Read more...

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?... Read more...

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.... Read more...

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.... Read more...

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.... Read more...

North Korean hackers have been exploiting the updating mechanism of the eScan antivirus to plant backdoors on big corporate networks and deliver cryptocurrency miners through GuptiMiner malware. Researchers describe GuptiMiner as `a highly sophisticated threat` that can perform DNS requests to the attacker`s DNS servers, extract payloads from images, sign its payloads, and perform DLL sideloading. Delivering GuptiMiner via eScan updates In a report released today, cybersecurity company Avast says that the threat actor behind GuptiMiner had an adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) position to hijack the normal virus definition update package and replace it with a malicious one named ‘updll62.dlz.’... Read more...

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... Read more...

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.... Read more...

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.... Read more...

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... Read more...