South Africans Say No To Tighter Immigration

19 Feb 2013

The African National Congress (ANC) policy of adopting tighter immigration control, adopted at the Mangaung conference in December last, will not solve South Africa’s concerns over jobs and crime, but will prove counter-productive, according to human rights groups and researchers here.

This is the outcome of the presentations made by a number of civil society organizations to Parliament’s portfolio committee on home affairs this week. The committee has begun a process of reviewing the immigration policy. It will make recommendations to the Department of Home Affairs, which is reviewing the Immigration Act of 2002.

The Mangaung conference had noted: "The presence of undocumented migrants in the Republic poses both an economic and security threat to the country. (There is) a need to balance the inward flow of low-skilled labor to curtail the negative impact it has on domestic employment".

Most of the organizations went by the negative impact of immigration controls on the economies of many European countries to come to the same conclusion.

South Africa considers its immigration policy as one of the most liberal in the world. However, the country’s openness to asylum seekers, compounded with corruption of border and home affairs officials, has resulted in widespread abuse of the system and assimilation of a large number of fraudulently documented or undocumented migrants.