South Africa Working Visas

 

Sa Migration 25/07/2022

South Africa seeks highly skilled individuals to live and work in SA.

SA Migration Services will provide professional assistance to arrange your work visa for you if you qualify.

Work Visas are regulated in terms of Section 19, Regulation 18 and items 18 (1), 19(2), 20, 21 and 22, of Schedule A.

There are three common types of Work Visas:

• General Work Visa
• Inter Company Transfer Visa
• Critical Skills Visa

 

How can we help you?  Please email us info@samigration.com or whatsApp us on:

 +27 82 373 8415, where are you now? Check out our website: www.samigration.com

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 Whatsapp Tel No: +27 (0) 82 373 8415

 

Landline:  +27 (0) 21 879 5560 – Head Office – Cape Town

     +27 (0) 12 880 1490 – Johannesburg / Pretoria

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Home Affairs Committee: Asylum system is broken, but not due to asylum seekers crossing the Channel

25 July 2022 – Eion

 

Report points to poor resourcing of staff and technology as major reason for Home Office struggle with asylum backlog

Home Affairs Committee: Asylum system is broken, but not due to asylum seekers crossing the Channel

An important new report published yesterday by Parliament's Home Affairs Committee examines the growing trend of asylum seekers arriving in the UK after crossing the English Channel in small boats.

Explaining the purpose of the report, the Committee said: "This Report seeks to consider why there has been a sharp and apparently continuing rise in the number of small boats carrying migrants to the United Kingdom across the English Channel in the past five years. Our inquiry sought to find out what can be done to prevent such crossings, both here and in other countries including in particular in our nearest EU neighbours, what our obligations are to those who seek to reach our shores, and what can be done to prevent the illegal smuggling and trafficking of people across international borders by criminal gangs who seek only to profit from human misery."

As the report notes, asylum seekers arriving by boat represent only a tiny percentage of immigration to the UK. In 2021 there were around 1,000,000 visas issued enabling extended stays in the UK compared to 28,500 people crossing the Channel.

Despite the Government's high-profile plans to remove asylum seekers to Rwanda, the numbers arriving in the UK by boat continue to rise significantly. Indeed, the Committee finds that the migration partnership with Rwanda so far shows no evidence of deterring crossings.

The Home Affairs Committee said: "The report finds that efforts by the Government to find a single, low-cost, solution to close off this route of entry are unrealistic and will not succeed. Threats of being put on a flight to Rwanda with no chance of return to the UK have so far failed to stop people making the extremely dangerous journey across the Channel. Their motivations, and their understanding of what will happen when they arrive in the UK, are also poorly understood and insufficient to inform good policy."

Importantly, the Committee says in the report that while they agree with the Home Secretary that the asylum system is broken, it was not asylum seekers crossing the Channel who broke it. The Committee points to the fact that the Home Office's increasing struggle to cope with the backlog in asylum cases comes despite the relatively low growth in the overall number of claims.

The report explains: "The number of asylum applications to the UK remained fairly consistent between 2015 and 2020. Following 35,737 applications in 2019 numbers fell during the early months of the pandemic before rising to 48,540 applications in 2021. While this is the highest annual number since 2003, the figure for 2021 remains significantly below the previous peak, of 84,132 applications, which occurred in 2002. Increasing pressures on the asylum system are not therefore a direct consequence of increasing demand: rather, they relate to the processing of applications within the UK as Home Office asylum caseload."

The report continues to further explain: "On 2 February 2022 the Home Secretary told us that the asylum system was collapsing, which she attributed to 'the various strains, abuses, sheer numbers coming to this country'. This assessment overlooks the fact that, even after the sharp increase in Channel crossings in 2021, the numbers seeking asylum in the UK in 2021 were just over half the number who applied in 2002. Government data shows that the number of asylum cases in Home Office 'work in progress' has doubled since 2014. At 30 June 2018—the last data point before Home Secretary Sajid Javid declared 221 migrants crossing the Channel a major incident in December 2018—there were already 88,848 cases in the system."

According to the Home Affairs Committee, a significant factor in the 'collapse' is poor resourcing of staff and technology in the Asylum Operations function in the Home Office.

"When decision makers are forced to manage their workflow using spreadsheets wholly inadequate for the size and complexity of the data, it is not surprising that errors occur and that data is lost. Nor is it surprising that it becomes difficult to retain demoralised staff or that the average time to resolve a single claim is now more than 14 months. It is not surprising that, given all these circumstances, the caseload keeps getting bigger," the report states.

The Home Affairs Committee says addressing the backlog must be the Home Office's highest priority within asylum operations.

On the issue of Channel crossings, the Committee calls for increased cooperation with France, including exploring setting up UK asylum processing facilities in France, and an increase in safe and legal routes for refugees to come to the UK.

In concluding, the report Home Affairs Committee says in its report: "We recognise that this crisis has been building over many years. But this Government's response, characterised first by inattention and then by poor decision-making, has exacerbated these problems and undermined public confidence in the asylum system and in the management of the border. The issue has not been helped by the perceived reluctance of the French Government to find a solution and work much more cooperatively with UK authorities in intercepting migrants before they reach British territorial waters.

"We urge the Government to show leadership through redoubling efforts to engage and co-operate with international partners. The provision of safe and legal routes to the UK should be a key part of the Government's strategy to counter the criminal trade, and this has not yet received the attention it deserves. The Government risks undermining its own ambitions and the UK's international standing if it cannot demonstrate that proposed policies such as pushbacks, now abandoned, and offshore processing, such as the Rwanda partnership now being legally challenged, are compatible with international law and conventions."

Diana Johnson MP, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, said: "It is clear that the asylum system is broken, but it is not those making Channel crossings who broke it. Policy development in this area has moved away from evidence-based, tested and cost-effective solutions reacting to the changing demands placed on it. Instead, we have a search for radical new policies that might make good headlines but do little to stem the flow of people prepared to put their lives at risk to reach the UK by any means necessary. … The UK needs an asylum system that deals with reality. It must be fair, efficient and acknowledge the UK's international obligations. It should work to remove obstacles for those likely to have a valid claim to come to the UK, whilst working with international partners to combat the criminal gangs facilitating illegal entry. Meeting this challenge will require careful planning and detailed understanding of the problems it seeks to solve. There is no quick-fix solution."

www.samigration.com

 

Home affairs blows R300 million on population register system

City Press – 25 July 2022

Massive bungle has not only cost government, it also compromises citizens’ documentation, police work.

The department of home affairs has spent millions of taxpayers’ money on a contract to upgrade its population register system, but years later, the work has still not been done.

The department paid the company EOH Holdings close to R300 million in 2017 to upgrade the Home Affairs National Information System (Hanis) to the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), but nothing was done.

After EOH failed to upgrade the system, the department paid another company, Idemia, which was initially subcontracted by EOH, more than R150 million to do the work, but the company also failed to do the job.

City Press has learnt that apart from paying for the system upgrade, the department spent more than R200 million on hardware and software, whose warrantee and licence was allegedly expiring in few weeks’ time, while it gathers dust.

Unlawful Scheme

Yesterday, the department told City Press that when the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) awarded EOH the contract, the department had no reason to think or suspect that the company may not have capacity to deliver on this contract.

“During the course of the forensic investigation, EOH announced that it was pulling out of all the contracts it had with the state, including this one. Because a lot of time was already lost, the department accepted the ceding of the contract to Idemia so that we don’t start from scratch because the system is urgently needed,” the department said.

It also confirmed paying R280 million.

“We deny that we paid between R300 million and R400 million. The contract, as awarded by the SITA, was worth R409 million. At the time EOH moved out of the contract, they had already purchased hardware for R113 383 482.12; software for R110 972 282.72; and also provided services worth R56 521 710.91. As you can see, the total is R280 877 475.75. This is what we paid for.”

The lucrative contract was awarded to EOH in 2017 by the department and the SITA, which procures ICT products and services for government departments. This after the company beat its competitors in a bidding process described as “corruption infested”. After several complaints about the tender, the department appointed a forensic auditing firm –Nexia SAB&T – to investigate the matter in 2019. Nexia SAB&T discovered that EOH and the SITA’s officials had allegedly engineered an unlawful scheme to make sure the politically connected company landed the lucrative contract.

The department yesterday confirmed the investigation.

“Because this is an IT function, in terms of the law, the department had to acquire such a service provider through the SITA. The SITA did that but unfortunately when the Auditor- General audited the SITA, it queried the manner in which the tender was awarded,” the statement said.

“Because the money to pay for this tender will come from the department, the Auditor-General instructed the department to conduct a forensic investigation.”

Responding to City Press, EOH blamed department for its failure to do the work, saying it failed to provide the company with key infrastructure and data.

Fatima Newman, Group Chief Risk Officer: EOH, said the services in question constituted the provision of both hardware and software components for the project. The deliverables and payment of fees was milestone-based, payable only against the supply of equipment and certain goals having been achieved.

In order to deliver on the project, the department had to provide to EOH certain critical infrastructure [data centres and communications infrastructure], access to government systems [interfaces] and also the data which had to be migrated from the old system on to the new system.

“These were either delayed or improperly delivered, or not delivered at all. The causes of the delay are the subject matter of arbitration proceedings between EOH and the department,” Newman said.

Motsoaledi Angered

Insiders told City Press that Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi met with senior officials in the department and was angry that the matter had not been resolved, and because the department was facing litigation from EOH and NEC XON, one of the companies that lost the tender bid, over the issue.

NEC XON took the matter to court, challenging the ceding of the contract by EOH to Idemia.

“He [Motsoaledi] accused the officials of dragging their feet in pursuing the matter. The minister also instructed the legal department and the heads of departments who were dealing with the matter to recover the money paid to both EOH and Idemia,” said the source.

However, the department denied the minister’s encounter with officials.

We strongly deny this. The minister regularly demands updates from the executive committee on this project because he wants the department to move to the ABIS sooner rather than later.

Mess-up affects police's fight

In the court papers seen by City Press, NEC XON cites Motsoaledi as the first respondent and the department as the second respondent. The three implicated companies are cited as respondents eight, nine and 10, respectively.

EOH, a JSE-listed group, was supposed to have upgraded the department’s current system and Hanis, which only records photos and fingerprints of South African identity document holders, to the ABIS. This would provide a single source of identification for citizens across state institutions and private sector entities. It was also supposed to allow the police to check the fingerprints of suspected criminals.   

In terms of the agreement it signed with the department, EOH was supposed to have completed the work in November 2018.

The company subcontracted a French-owned company, Idemia, to implement the project, allegedly because it did not have the capacity and technical erudition to implement it.

According to sources, the company missed the deadline, disadvantaging citizens and disabling the SA Police Service, which paid part of the contract, from effectively fighting crime in South Africa.

After EOH was implicated in the much-publicised allegations of corruption, the company’s new CEO, Stephen van Coller, who was appointed to clean up the legacy and remnants of corruption that plagued it, pulled out of the contract in 2020 and ceded it to Idemia, which gloatingly parades itself as a global leader in augmented identity.

Newman said the reason Van Coller wanted out of the agreement was because “the situation of impossibility” which had arisen by late 2020 or early last year was such that it could not be resolved.

“EOH did not want to stand in the way of a resolution and agreed to an assignment [cession] of the master service agreement by the department to Idemia in April last year,” said Newman.

She said the department and EOH were currently going through arbitration regarding their historical disputes.

The SITA flagged the contract for violating procurement laws when it was ceded from EOH to Idemia with the consent of the department.

“What is funny and ironic about the cession of this contract to Idemia is that it is the very same company that failed to implement this contract. We were all shocked [by that decision],” said the source, who did not want to be named for fear of victimisation.

DEADLINES CAME AND WENT

The department, said the source, then entered into a R150 million contract with Idemia in April last year. The company was given six months to complete the project.

The company failed to complete the upgrade on time and asked for the extension until October.

“October came and is gone. They then asked for an extension to November.

“It came and is gone. They asked for an extension to December, it came and is gone. They then asked for January extension, it came and is gone. When NEC XON threatened to take them to court because of the difficult position the SAPS found itself in, they then promised that the contract would be completed, but six months later, there is no system upgraded,” said the source.

Aloma Swanepoel, of Ginjaninja PR, who responded to City Press on behalf of Idemia, said the company did not comment on its contracts. He referred all enquiries to the department of home affairs.

The source said Motsoaledi also expressed concerns about Idemia’s failure to meet the deadline. It is alleged that some officials suggested that the department should penalise EOH and Idemia for failing to meet the deadline and also recover the money it paid to EOH.

But EOH has already beaten them to the game by approaching the courts in a bid to be released from the agreement. It is also demanding the balance of R128 million with interest, as per the original contract.

Newman said EOH had successfully delivered 51 of the 60 contracted milestones for phase 1 of the project, which had been signed off and accepted by the department. “EOH only received R282 million [including VAT] in payment for services rendered,” she said.

Newman said the agreed fee for the entire project was about R410 million, which had not been paid in full. She said EOH had only been paid for certified deliverables.

www.samigration.com

 

Constitutional Court settles 7-year battle over citizenship

LHR – 25 July 2022

 

The Constitutional Court yesterday handed down judgment in a case launched by Lawyers for Human Rights in 2016, but which started with negotiations with the Department of Home Affairs as far back as 2013. The applicants ask for one simple thing: dignity. Dignity, in this case, comes in the form of citizenship – the vessel for membership, belonging, safety and security in a world based on States.

The 5 applicants in Chisuse and Others v Director General, Department of Home Affairs and Another [2020] were each born to a South African citizen parent, outside of the Republic of South Africa. Each applicant returned to South Africa at some point after their birth. Often, they returned to be with family, some were returned as children (without their parents) to stay with South African grandparents, some returned because it became apparent that they were not citizens of the country of their birth. The result was the same, they were living in South Africa, the country they are linked to by blood, without recognition of citizenship and without the option of citizenship anywhere else. They were made stateless in the country of their ancestors.

The applicants, represented by the Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) Statelessness Project, argued that the South African Citizenship Act must be unconstitutional if it excludes them from South African citizenship. The High Court agreed and made an order in 2018 declaring the applicants to be South African citizens and ordering the Department of Home Affairs to issue them with ID documents and birth certificates. The order of constitutional invalidity had to be confirmed by the Constitutional Court and was vehemently opposed by the Department until the bitter end. This despite at least two applicants being able to provide DNA evidence of their link to a South African parent. Two other applicants had government issued proof of their link to South African parents.

In a unanimous judgment, penned by Khampepe J, the court vindicated the applicants and said:

“Citizenship and equality of citizenship is therefore a matter of considerable importance in South Africa, particularly bearing in mind the abhorrent history of citizenship deprivation suffered by many in South Africa over the last hundred and more years. Citizenship is not just a legal status. It goes to the core of a person’s identity, their sense of belonging in a community and, where xenophobia is a lived reality, to their security of person.”

The Court upheld the applicants’ pre-existing right to citizenship in terms of the Citizenship Act. Instead of finding that the Act is unconstitutional, it followed the established principles of interpretation and found that the Act is capable of an interpretation which honours the spirit of the Constitution. The Court found that the applicants and those similarly placed (persons who are born to South African citizens abroad at any point before or after 2013) fall under section 2(1)(b) of the Citizenship Act and are therefore citizens by birth.

“Access to citizenship is not only at the core of a person’s dignity, it is crucial to the achievement of our Constitutional aims which includes recognising the injustices of our past and healing those divisions to create a united and democratic South Africa while freeing the potential of every person” said Liesl Muller, attorney for the applicants.

Our clients expressed overwhelming relief and hope when the Constitutional Court saw them and called them each by name, declaring them to be South African citizens. It may have been a 7-year legal battle, but for these South Africans it has been a life-long struggl

www.samigration.com

 

South Africa: Court Action to Stop Immigrants Being Denied Life-Saving Healthcare

AllAfrica 25 July 2022

Two-year-old Zimbabwean boy died after state hospital denied him treatment because his mother had no birth certificate

SECTION27, a public interest law organisation, has launched an application in the Gauteng High Court to scrap discriminatory practices that deny immigrant women and their children state health care.

An affidavit in the case describes specific cases where children have been denied treatment.

SECTION27 says there is no coherent approach between facilities and even within hospitals treatment depends on having luck with the official on duty.

The rights of immigrant and undocumented women and children to access free healthcare in South Africa will be put to the test in a court challenge launched by SECTION27 in the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg.

In December 2019, two-year-old Sibusiso Ncube died of poisoning after he was refused treatment at Charlotte Maxeke Hospital because his Zimbabwean mother could not instantly produce his birth certificate or pay R5,000, says an affidavit in the court case.

This was not an isolated incident according to Umunyana Rugege, executive director of SECTION27.

"Since 2013, SECTION27 has been repeatedly approached by pregnant migrant women and children under six, who have been denied access to free health services. This is perpetuated through discriminatory subordinate laws and practices," Rugege says in her affidavit.

"They have routinely been denied access to the health care services, or they are pressured into signing acknowledgements of debt and undertakings to pay for services."

SECTION27 wants all the relevant ordinances and regulations scrapped. It also seeks an an order that the Minister of Health issue a circular to all provincial health departments recording that all pregnant or lactating women, and children under six, who are not members of medical aid schemes and who have not come to South Africa to obtain health care, be entitled to free health services at any public health establishment, irrespective of their nationality and documentation status.

Rugege says that while the National Health Act does not place any limitation on the right to free health services, there are a range of subordinate laws and practices implemented at hospitals that impose conditions requiring proof of nationality and financial means.

"These laws and practices are unlawful," she says.

Rugege cited other examples, such as a pregnant asylum seeker who was denied treatment after she was injured in a robbery. She was told she had to pay R2,000 before a "file could be opened" at Steve Biko Academic Hospital.

Two months later, when she was eight-months pregnant and went to Charlotte Maxeke, she was told she had to pay R20,000 if she wanted treatment and give birth at the hospital. Only after SECTION27 intervened, was she given an appointment, but the night before it she lost her baby.

Another Zimbabwean woman whose child needed emergency surgery was forced to sign an admission of debt for more than R34,000 at the same hospital. Then when he needed further surgery, it was denied because of the outstanding debt. The woman was further told that she would have to pay R5,000 for admission and R50,000 for the second surgery.

Again SECTION27 intervened. But in March, when the mother took him back for a check-up, a nurse addressed everyone in the queue and told them that foreign nationals would not be attended to if they did not have money to pay. The mother, and others, left without being seen.

The application is supported by the Jesuit Refugee Service, The Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, and Doctors Without Borders; all are expected to file affidavits soon. Rugege says these will highlight discriminatory institutional policies and systematic xenophobic practices and attitudes that have "detrimental and sometimes fatal consequences".

"There is simply no coherent approach at different public health establishments ... even within a single establishment, different officials treat patients differently," she said. Access to health care depends on who is on duty that day. On "lucky days" people will gain access without any trouble.

The respondents -- the MEC and Gauteng health department head, the Minister and Director-General of Health -- have 15 days to file notices of opposition.

www.samigration.com