Home affairs has dropped central adjudication of visas, after months of complaints

Business Insider SA – 06 September 2022

• The department of home affairs has reversed a decision to centralise the adjudication of long-term visas.
• That plan lasted for only a couple of months, and did not go at all well.
• Embassies – previously accused of sometimes endangering national security or harming the economy – are now back in charge.

As of 1 September, South Africa is no longer centralising the adjudication of long-term visas, the department of home affairs (DHA) confirmed on Tuesday.

That brings to an end a fraught six-m

onth period for those who applied for such visas, previously handled by individual South African missions abroad, and makes consular officials responsible again for deciding who is let in to South Africa

Visa specialists Xpatweb first noted the reversal on the weekend, saying it expected an announcement from the department on the transitional arrangement for visas already in process.

The DHA told Business Insider South Africa only that it "did issue a new directive which came into effect on Thursday 01 September 2022". It did not provide a copy of the directive, despite repeated requests, and has made no public statement on the matter.

Extreme delays in issuing such visas – with delays facilitation companies described as unprecedented – have been a significant headache for foreign companies investing and doing business in South Africa, Business Leadership SA CEO Busisiwe Mavuso told the News24 On The Record conference on Thursday, the same day the reversal came into effect.

WATCH: Home affairs officials caught on their phones as people queue to be helped

The Department of Home Affairs has said it will investigate after officials were filmed using their cellphones while on duty. Video footage of two officials on their phones at the Tongaat office in KwaZulu-Natal was widely circulated on social media. In the video members of the public can be seen waiting to be helped. Acting home affairs director general Thulani Mavuso has...

Those affected have included companies that signed up to President Cyril Ramaphosa's investment drive, but have since said delays nearing a year in processing work visas for critical foreign staff meant they could not start work.

Some companies expressed acute frustration because they could find no way to reach a department official who could provide even a vague prediction of how long a visa would take – or who could even confirm that a visa application had been accepted as properly lodged – making it impossible to plan moves for employees who needed to secure places in schools for children and move their households across oceans. 

Until Thursday, all work visa applications with a duration of more than three months had to be sent to Pretoria for a decision by the director general of the DHA, in an effort to create consistency – and prevent corruption. Visa facilitators said missions were told the DHA was concerned about reports of arbitrary demands for documents, with the implication that these were subtle solicitations for bribes. They were also told that only central decision-making could balance the need for national security with the need to allow foreign investors to move with speed.

But centralisation was a disaster. Visas that previously took between four and eight weeks to issue suddenly took a minimum of 12 weeks – and consultants reported that the reality was closer to eight months.

Their clients, those consultants said, could not wait that long, and would simply take their business to another country.

Visa facilitation companies believe the consular service divisions of missions – still fully staffed to process visas – may now be able to bring turnaround times down to as low as two weeks.

www.samigration.com

Australia lifts permanent immigration by 35,000 to 195,000

6 Sep 2022 – CNBC

 

The Australian government announced on Friday it will increase its permanent immigration intake by 35,000 to 195,000 in the current fiscal year.

• Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said many of the “best and brightest minds” were choosing to migrate to Canada, Germany and Britain instead of Australia.

 

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said many of the “best and brightest minds” were choosing to migrate to Canada, Germany and Britain instead of Australia.

The Australian government announced on Friday it will increase its permanent immigration intake by 35,000 to 195,000 in the current fiscal year as the nation grapples with skills and labor shortages.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announced the increase for the year ending June 30, 2023, during a two-day summit of 140 representatives of governments, trade unions, businesses and industry to address skills shortages exacerbated by the pandemic.

O’Neill said Australian nurses have been working double and triple shifts for the past two years, flights were being canceled because of a lack of ground staff and fruit was being left to rot on trees because there was no one to pick it.

“Our focus is always Australian jobs first, and that’s why so much of the summit has focused on training and on the participation of women and other marginalized groups,” O’Neil said.

“But the impact of COVID has been so severe that even if we exhaust every other possibility, we will still be many thousands of workers short, at least in the short term,” she added.

Housing affordability in Australia will deteriorate, says Moody’s

O’Neil said many of the “best and brightest minds” were choosing to migrate to Canada, Germany and Britain instead of Australia.

She described Australia’s immigration program as “fiendishly complex” with more than 70 unique visa programs.

Australia would establish a panel to rebuild its immigration program in the national interest, she said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Thursday, the first day of the Jobs and Skills Summit, that 180,000 free places would be offed in vocational education schools next year at a cost of 1.1 billion Australian dollars ($748,000) to reduce the nation’s skills shortage.

Australia imposed some of the strictest international travel restrictions of an democratic country for 20 months early in the pandemic and gradually reopened to skilled workers from December last year.

www.samigration.com

 

 

Till Home Affairs us do part: couple can’t say ‘I do’ because they’re still married to their dead spouses

Daily Maverick – 06 September 2022

 

Audrey Thomas (75) and Edgar Meyer (76) can't marry because the Home Affairs database was never updated after the deaths of their loved-ones.

An elderly couple who plan to get married next month have discovered that in the red-tape world of Home Affairs, death does not part you. The department’s system shows they are still married to their dead spouses.

The invitations have been sent, the dress made and the hall hired for Gqeberha couple Audrey Thomas (75) and Edgar Meyer (76) to tie the knot on 10 September.

Friends for the past 40 years, Thomas and Meyer fell in love after they lost their spouses in 2018 and 2020. But as they prepared for their wedding and saw the priest they wished to marry them, they were told to obtain a validation certificate from Home Affairs to confirm that neither of them was married any more – something that would apparently be quick and painless. Only it wasn’t.

In the past, couples who wished to get married and were widowed could merely present the death certificates of their respective spouses to the marriage officers.

Home Affairs included this requirement in an effort to fight fraudulent marriages.

The problem appears to be that the Home Affairs system had not updated the marital statuses of either Meyer or Thomas and both are still reflected as legally married to their spouses.

“We even took them the stamped death certificates,” Meyer said. “But they say there is nothing they can do. Home Affairs themselves had stamped both death certificates.”

After being referred to “Counter 11” for service, Meyer had no luck. When he asked to see a supervisor he was told the problem was with “head office”.

“They were blaming Covid-19 for the backlog,” Thomas said, “but our spouses both died before Covid.”

The stress of the situation has caused Thomas’s health to deteriorate and her ulcer to flare up.

“I asked a friend if he could go to head office in Pretoria but was told that they do not see members of the public at head office,” Meyer said. “I was advised that it would be completely in vain for him to go because they will not let him in.”

“Officials also told me that documentation can only be sent to ‘head office’ in Pretoria by post. It cannot be sent in any other way,” he said.

This has been done a few times already.

Living in sin

An Anglican priest in Gqeberha, Nicolette Leonard, said she was desperate to help the couple. “They do not want to live in sin. And they are old. I am doing everything I can to help them.” She said a senior manager at Home Affairs had indicated that he would try to help.

With the big day around the corner, Meyer is now desperate for a resolution.

“If someone can tell me what to do I will do it,” he said.

Leonard said other marriage officers had the same problem with couples where one or both of them were divorced.

The department introduced this step “due to the large number of fraudulent marriages reported to the Department of Home Affairs  [DHA] every year”, according to its website.

South Africans used to be able to check their marital status by SMSing the letter M followed by an ID number to 32551, but this service has been suspended. In September 2021, Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi explained in a written answer to Parliament why the online verification system (OVS) had been suspended.

“The [system] was initially deployed and accessed by citizens for the online verification of marital status, passport and ID application status, among others.

“The system gained popularity to the point whereby insurance companies were not using proper processes. However, insurance companies opted to use the same free service designed for individual citizens.

“International users were identified trying to access our National Population Register system via the unsecured system,” he explained.

He said this posed a risk to the safety of citizens’ data.

“The department was then advised to temporarily close the OVS and work on a solution to address all identified risks. Security of citizens’ data is the priority of the DHA. That’s why the department opted to temporarily close the system, until OVS is secured and is solely accessed by the authorised users.

“Thereafter, [the] DHA separated OVS processes for insurance companies and citizens, into two phases.

“The former is already in commission, while the latter is being planned to be released as a second phase… Efforts are under way to provide such services in a more secure fashion,” Motsoaledi added.

Home Affairs media manager David Hlabane has not yet responded to a request for comment from the department.

www.samigration.com

 

 

South Africa’s visa backlog putting billions in investment at risk

Enca – 01 September 2022

 

The slow pace of visa approvals for foreign experts and CEOs might lead to multinational corporations investing elsewhere, says Jean Claude Lasserre, the chairperson of the French Trade Advisors.

Speaking to ENCA, Lasserre said that the slow processes at the Department of Home Affairs, paired with a backlog of unprocessed visas, have left many highly skilled professionals, including process engineers and financial experts from entering the country.

The presence of these outsourced skills in South Africa forms part of France’s pledge to invest R50 billion into the country.

This follows a recent South African Reserve Bank Quarterly Bulletin that showed that foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow from across the globe was R27.2 billion in the first quarter of 2022.

Lasserre said that more than 99% of the people employed in the investment projects are from South Africa; however, some experts from overseas are still required – even if they invest heavily into the upskilling of domestic staff.

He said that if the process of getting visas is not sped up, it will ultimately lead to disinvestment in South Africa as it makes organising and doing business in the country more difficult.

Slow visa processes are a shared concern among many multinationals, not just French companies, said Lasserre. This is why there have been strong calls for the Department of Home Affairs as well as the Department of Trade and Industry to address the issue.

The long queue of visa applications has no prioritisation and does not consider the length in which someone must wait. If this was to continue, multinationals might look elsewhere to invest as projects will be delayed.

South Africa is a pipeline for the international community into Africa as a whole, but if this issue can not be addressed, multinational corporations may look elsewhere on the continent to make a hub, said Lasserre.

Getting a working visa has recently been made even harder to get by the Department of Employment and Labour (DEL), say immigration experts at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr.

The legal experts said that employers must ensure that they comply with new requirements to avoid any administrative delays in the processing of visa applications.

The new annexure to regulations means that there is a compulsory preliminary process to be followed before work visa applications are submitted to the Visa Facilitation Services.

The new procedure adds additional compliance steps and requires that an application be submitted to the DEL for vetting.

Steps by government 

In an attempt to process the backlog of visa applications on foreign nationals, the Department of Home Affairs, on 27 June, decided to introduce temporary measures to assist the situation.

In terms of visa applications that are still pending, the department said that foreign national who are awaiting the outcome of their visa application is granted a temporary extension until 30 September 2022 of the current visa status.

The department added that:

• Applicants with pending long-term visa applications who originate from countries that are exempt from the port of entry visa requirements and who wish to travel may do so by presenting their VFS receipts on arrival back to collect their visa outcomes.
• Applicants with pending long-term visa applications who originate from countries that are visa restricted would require a port of entry visa and their VFS receipt in order to be re-admitted into South Africa.

www.samigration.com

 

Big changes proposed for visas in South Africa – including plans for highly skilled foreign workers

ABX  - 27 August 2022

 

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana says that the government will explore the feasibility of a visa recognition programme next quarter that will allow the holders of certain visas of recognised countries to enter South Africa without a new application process.

Speaking during the release of the Operation Vulindlela (OV) report on Friday (5 August), the minister pointed out that the government rolled out its e-visa system and has extended it to 14 countries to support the country’s tourism sector. It is anticipated that more countries will be added to the list in due course.

A comprehensive review of the work visa system has been completed, with recommendations for reform of the visa regime to attract skills and investment, said the minister. The report is due out later in August.

In the meantime, the Department of Home Affairs has published an updated critical skills list for South Africa, showing what skills are in short supply across the country. The new list has added 39 new skills, building on top of the previous publication in February of this year.

The critical skills list from the Department of Home Affairs falls under the Immigration Act and sets out the qualifications and skills deemed to be critical for the country in relation to an application for a critical skills work visa or permanent residence permit.

“South Africa’s labour market is characterised by a growing demand for skilled labour alongside high levels of unemployment for unskilled labour. Addressing the skills shortage requires a combination of short and longer-term solutions,” the government has said.

“In the short term, we need to attract skills where these are in short supply in order to boost the competitiveness of firms and enable growth and dynamism in the economy,” it said.

“Highly skilled foreign workers create more than one job for South African workers on average and contribute significantly to tax revenues and spending in the economy, as well as to productivity improvements and innovation.”

Operation Vulindlela together with the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) undertook a comprehensive review of the regulatory framework and processes for skills visas in South Africa.

The review led by Mavuso Msimang sought to identify improvements that could enhance the effectiveness of the visa system. Its recommendations aim to achieve a balance between the economic benefits of skilled immigration and the need to promote and prioritise the employment of South Africans.

An effective work visa system could contribute significantly to higher levels of economic growth and position South Africa as a globally competitive destination for investment and innovation,” the government said.

Labour minister Thulas Nxesi recently told Bloomberg that he aims to add as many as 2 million new jobs before the next elections, despite the current high levels of unemployment that have plagued the country for decades.

About 12 million South Africans are without jobs. That means unemployment according to the expanded definition, which includes people who were available for work but not looking for a job, is at 45.5%. Africa’s most-industrialized nation will go to the polls to elect its next president in 2024, Bloomberg reported.

Nxesi’s job target may be difficult to achieve – if history is a guide, it said. The government’s 2012 economic blueprint that president Cyril Ramaphosa co-authored targeted an official unemployment rate of 14% by 2020. That’s the year when the official jobless rate exceeded 30%, and it’s now at 34.5%.

“Whether or not that is achievable, I don’t know,” Nxesi said of his goal in an interview in Bloomberg’s office in Johannesburg. The government is working on policy amendments to prioritize South Africans’ access to jobs over foreign nationals with the same skills, he said.

Strict labour laws, stagnant productivity, bureaucratic hurdles and a skills shortage have reduced the ability of companies to hire additional workers, Bloomberg said.

There’s been a trend of “employment of foreign workers at the expense of the South African workers,” Nxesi said. “The issue is the employers who deliberately employ these vulnerable people.”

Reducing undocumented immigrants will be vital in addressing unemployment, he said. “It’s a very sensitive matter everywhere, but if you look in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Nigeria and Ghana – they have all declared that you can’t bring anyone from outside if there is a national who is able to perform that job,” he said.

To limit the influx of illegal migrants from neighbouring nations, South Africa wants to establish a border control agency. The Border Management Authority will have branches at six border posts, to begin with, and employ people from various government departments to tighten the implementation of immigration policies.

www.samiigration.com