SA keeps the brakes on foreign visa applications

16 September 2022 – Business Day

Billions in foreign investment are at risk as processes in home affairs remain stalled

While long overdue, the current efforts to tackle corruption and shortcomings in the department of home affairs are welcome. But as the cleanup is carried out processes within the department remain stalled, affecting thousands of people and putting foreign investment at risk, among other negative fallout.

Former director-general of home affairs Mavuso Msimang has been deployed to help deal with issues and review processes in the department, a mammoth task. This is expected to be backed soon by a multidisciplinary team to investigate anomalies in issuing permits and visas issued since 2014.

People around the world who have suffered the effects of delays and irregularities now have the hope of resolution of their applications and appeals — eventually. But with years in backlogs and a limited staff in place to work through them, lives continue to be disrupted by these delays and foreign investment remains in jeopardy.

In our experience, civic services are working smoothly, with SA passport applications being processed within two to four weeks, but few if any temporary residence and permanent residence visa and/or applications for foreigners. To want to “clean house” and put the right people in place imply that home affairs issues are being taken seriously, but at the same time the department continues to make it virtually impossible for foreigners to invest, work, live and study in SA.

Scores of investors and wealthy applicants who are ready and able to pay the R120,000 net worth fee for SA permanent residence permits are being ignored and rejected for no valid reason. Wealthy foreigners wanting to retire and spend their fortunes in SA are being turned away. As we have noted previously, adjudication needs to be done consistently, fairly, and in line with the relevant laws.

Behind the delays

With applicants waiting up to three years for adjudication, patience has worn thin. The suspension of most services during the pandemic stalled the applications of thousands of people. Since March 2021 temporary residence visa applications regardless of categories could take 10 to 12 months to process, and while it seems that the department is dealing with the backlogs, they are so significant that many temporary residence visa applications remain pending a year later.

A blanket waiver issued in December last year and a number of times since then may have been intended to handle the problem, but it doesn’t solve the challenge faced by people from visa-restricted countries such as India, Iran or Lithuania. While these people may use the waiver to leave SA without being banned, once they are in their countries of origin they cannot return without a visa. And these can take longer than a year to obtain.

Anyone applying for a visa at a foreign mission faces inconsistent treatment and lengthy delays — even a 90-day visa, which used to take five days, now takes up to nine months to issue. The personnel posted at foreign SA missions are not well trained, nor particularly friendly to foreigners, and are not particularly efficient in their relations with management at the department’s head office in Pretoria. Often one finds glaring gaps of information and knowledge between foreign missions and the department’s head office, giving rise to all kinds of anomalies, substantive mistakes and delays as a consequence. 

The centralisation of adjudication of long-term visa applications, now reversed following a flurry of complaints, worsened the delays. Centralising adjudication to Pretoria at the beginning of the year meant further frustration and delays for foreign applicants, some of whom have been waiting for up to three years for visas and/or permits based on skills, net worth or retirement.

In addition, about 250,000 Zimbabweans working in SA — and their employers — face an uncertain future over contradictory statements around Zimbabwe exit permits. The Helen Suzman Foundation recently noted that the director-general’s position demonstrated there was no genuine intention to give individual exemptions.

Meanwhile, foreign businesspeople have warned that they could reassess or move their investments in SA to other African countries where it is easier to do business. One multimillionaire in Germany who applied for permanent residence in 2016 based on net worth recently had his application rejected on grounds related to an entirely different applicant. Inconsistent and flawed outcomes continue to result in appeals and court cases — in our practice we have close to 30 high court cases in 2022 alone.  

In an interview recently French Trade Advisors in SA chair Jean Claude Lasserre noted that despite promises by the authorities to support international investments in SA, delays issuing working visas were preventing skilled international managers, engineers and other employees from running French investments in SA. He said more than 300 French companies, employing more than 65,000 direct employees, were already present in the country, and French businesses had committed to invest a further R50bn in SA during a recent investment conference.

Lasserre has urged action on new intracompany and critical skills work visas for international staff, their families and all professors of the French School, and the renewal of working visas for existing top managers and experts driving French companies in SA.

The old saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same” appears to apply here. While efforts are clearly being made to clean up home affairs, in practice the department’s processes remain fraught with the same delays and inconsistencies people have complained about for years

www.samigration.com

Migrant religious workers will no longer get work permits, permanent residency

EWN – 16 September 2022

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi made the announcement before Parliament’s portfolio committee on Tuesday while giving an update on the Bushiri investigation.

CAPE TOWN - The Home Affairs Department has announced that it will be clamping down on foreign religious workers who are looking to work in South Africa.

Malawian evangelist Shepherd Bushiri escaped in 2020 while facing money laundering charges.

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has said that foreign national religious workers will no longer be eligible for work permits, or permanent residency, in the country.

Motsoaledi was before Parliament’s portfolio committee on Tuesday for an update on the Bushiri investigation.

A chief director has been dismissed, and four junior officials are still facing disciplinary proceedings, for illegally granting Bushiri a residency permit.

Motsoaledi said there’s no doubt Bushiri and his wife skipped the country while they were out on bail. “I want to confirm that on our movement control system, we do not see any record of the Bushiris leaving, which means they left the country illegally,” he said.

Motsoaledi said an investigation was also under way to determine how another evangelist, Nigerian Timothy Omotoso, had acquired South African residency.

Omotoso is currently facing a raft of rape and human trafficking charges in the Eastern Cape.

“We are saying they must come only as visitors, but as visitors who can perform work. This change means there’s no avenue available for these religious workers to migrate to permanent residence status,” said Motsoaledi.

Motsoaledi said the Hawks would not reveal to him how Bushiri dodged immigration to return to Malawi.

www.samigration.com

A foreign couple worth R49 million can finally retire in SA – despite home affairs and FNB

Business Insider SA – 16 September 2022

• theory, South Africa welcomes foreigners worth at least R12 million who want to settle locally.
• A couple in their seventies from Singapore – worth R49 million – found it a little hard to take advantage of that welcome.
• First National Bank said, incorrectly, that they had submitted a fraudulent account statement.
• Even after that mistake was corrected, the department of home affairs refused to grant them residency, up to fighting them in court.
• The DHA has now been ordered to issue their permits, and cover their legal costs.

A wealthy couple from Singapore should finally receive permanent residency in South Africa towards the end of this month, after a three-and-a-half-year fight to take advantage of immigration provisions designed to attract wealthy people and their money.

And the department of home affairs (DHA) will have to settle their legal bill.

On Friday, the Western Cape High Court gave the director-general of home affairs and its minister 20 days to issue residence permits to Yew Teck Ling and See Hie Chua, a married couple of Singaporean nationals in their early 70s.

They have a net worth of at least R49 million, well above the threshold of R12 million used in South Africa to determine if people are rich enough for special treatment.

But that made no difference when things went horribly wrong after they submitted their application for permanent residency in January 2019.

The couple submitted nine statements from three different banks, to show how much cash they had. As would emerge later, the DHA took almost exactly two years to ask one of those banks, First National Bank, to verify some of those statements. FNB's specialist bank statement verification unit immediately came back with an answer: at least one statement "appears to be fraudulent as the transactions reflected thereon does [sic] not correspond with the transactions on the Bank's systems."

It took another eight months, to September 2021, for DHA to convey that news to the couple, telling them that their attempt at fraud makes them people "not of good and sound character", and so not welcome in South Africa. 

DHA did not tell them which bank statement had been deemed a fake, not when they asked in October, not when they asked in November, and not when they asked in December.

Only this year, in the face of legal action, did their lawyers first obtain the record of the decision, and then an admission that crying fraud had been "an error".

Armed with that, their lawyers went back to home affairs in May, to suggest that it stop fighting their court application for their permits.

DHA refused. The couple, it said, had now overstayed their previous permits. They would first have to fill out the correct forms to explain why they had not renewed their temporary visas. Having so sought to legalise their stay, they could either apply for permanent residency again from scratch, or could try for an appeal against the previous decision, having first asked for condonation for filing that appeal late.

Either way, they would not get "the opportunity to submit the correct and verified bank statements with proof thereof."

This, the DHA's lawyers told their lawyers, would be a "practical and pragmatic solution going forward."

In fact, there was absolutely no other way to deal with the case, home affairs director general Livhuwani Makhode told the court. His decision to deny the application had been correct, he said; the fact that he had done so based on a mistake by someone else made his call neither wrong nor unreasonable.

And now, Makhode said, it was utterly impossible to reconsider the matter. As the file on the application had been closed, any further action on it – such as correcting FNB's mistake – would undermine departmental procedure from which there can be no deviation.

He did not say how exactly the couple could reapply in the face of an uncorrected finding that they had committed fraud, nor how long their new application might take.

But considering South Africa's approach to attracting rich foreigners – at least in theory – there is no reason to put the couple through the uncertainty of another application, ruled judge Judith Cloete. Instead, DHA should simply issue their permits.

And, so as to not "make a mockery of their duty to be accountable", the home affairs DG and minister can pay their legal costs too, in their official capacities. 

www.samigration.com

FNB warns 200,000 Zimbabweans living and working in SA: You have 100 days left, then we will…

Moneyweb – 09 September 2022

Nearly 200,000 Zimbabweans are at risk of deportation when the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit (ZEP) scheme ends in December.

Lawyers representing the permit holders say they are preparing to haul banks to court to prevent them from closing the accounts of any ZEP holder.

“Sadly, we have to go to court to protect our rights,” says Advocate Simba Chitando, who is representing the ZEP Holders Association (Zepha). This is the largest fraud ever committed by an African government on the citizens of another African country, and it must be brought to an end. One of the reasons cited by the Department of Home Affairs for suspending the ZEP system is the cost of administering the system. It says it only had R15 million available for exemption permits, yet Zimbabweans have paid hundreds of millions of rands to Home Affairs to obtain these permits,” says Chitando.

“Home Affairs has been bilking Zimbabweans, most of them poor, for more than a decade.”

Also targeted for legal action is VFS Global, owned by one of the world’s largest private equity firms, US-based Blackstone.

VFS Global is responsible for processing the exemption permits on behalf of Home Affairs.

Attorneys representing Zepha have written to VFS Global asking it to account for the number of applications it processed under the ZEP system, and its predecessor, the Zimbabwe Special Dispensation Permit (ZSP).

Zepha estimates that close to half a billion rand would have been paid over by Zimbabweans applying for these permits.

“We will not hesitate to take legal action against Blackstone, in the United States, using lawyers based there,” adds Chitando.

“We intend to mobilise civil society in the US to expose the practice of never-ending expensive applications and extensions, instead of simply providing ZEP holders with permanent residence permits.”

ZEP holders have started receiving notices from FNB bank that their permits will no longer be valid after 31 December 2022, and must be replaced with a ‘mainstream’ visa after the Department of Home Affairs decided to end the ZEP system.

The notice does not explain what will happen to those FNB customers who are ZEP holders and do not qualify for a ‘mainstream’ visa, though many fear their accounts will be closed, thereby throttling their ability to continue living and working in South Africa.

The ZEP system has been in operation in various forms since 2009, allowing Zimbabweans to live, work, study and conduct business in SA. It was introduced to legitimise the status of Zimbabweans in SA, many of whom fled the political and economic chaos at home.

Last year Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced the ZEP scheme would be terminated at the end of 2021. He then extended the termination period by a year to allow an estimated 178 000 permit holders to apply for alternative visas.

ZEP representatives in SA believe Home Affairs is responding to and fuelling xenophobia, already at dangerously high levels after massive job losses brought on by Covid lockdowns.

Motsoaledi’s decision to suspend the scheme is being challenged in three separate court cases brought by the Helen Suzman Foundation, the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit Holders Association (Zepha), and the Zimbabwe Immigration Federation.

All three are asking the courts to set aside the minister’s decision to suspend the ZEP system, pointing to the disastrous impact it will have on the region if potentially hundreds of thousands of people are forced to repatriate to a country with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. These cases are likely to be heard in October.

One of the reasons cited by Home Affairs for suspending the permit scheme is to ease unemployment in SA – though this is refuted by the Zimbabwe Immigration Federation, which argues in its court papers that the 178 000 ZEP holders constitute just 0.3% of SA’s population of about 60 million.

There is some evidence of back-tracking by Home Affairs, after some ZEP holders received letters from the department’s director-general Livhuwani Makhode that ZEP ‘waiver applications’ are being reconsidered by the minister pending legal advice.

“It has come to our attention that the banks have been weaponised by the government to enforce the shakedown of ZEP holders, who risk their accounts being frozen if they do not apply for visas many do not qualify for, because Home Affairs has made documentation all but impossible,” says Chitando.

FNB’s response

“FNB is monitoring developments regarding the status of Zimbabwean Exemption Permits (ZEPs) and communicates regularly to customers who may be affected. Our latest communication to customers who are ZEP holders aims to inform them about the most recent directive from the Department of Home Affairs and the options available to them.

“The term ‘mainstream visas’ in our customer communication generally refers to visas that are prescribed under the Immigration Act,” the bank states.

“We are committed to helping our customers to ensure that their bank accounts are used and managed in accordance with the relevant laws. Our customers can also contact us directly if they have any questions or need assistance with their bank accounts.”

Moneyweb reached out to VFS Global for comment, but had not received a reply by the time of publication. – Moneyweb

www.samigration.com

FNB warns 200,000 Zimbabweans living and working in SA: You have 100 days left, then we will…

Moneyweb – 8 September 2022

Nearly 200,000 Zimbabweans are at risk of deportation when the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit (ZEP) scheme ends in December.

Lawyers representing the permit holders say they are preparing to haul banks to court to prevent them from closing the accounts of any ZEP holder.

“Sadly, we have to go to court to protect our rights,” says Advocate Simba Chitando, who is representing the ZEP Holders Association (Zepha). This is the largest fraud ever committed by an African government on the citizens of another African country, and it must be brought to an end. One of the reasons cited by the Department of Home Affairs for suspending the ZEP system is the cost of administering the system. It says it only had R15 million available for exemption permits, yet Zimbabweans have paid hundreds of millions of rands to Home Affairs to obtain these permits,” says Chitando.

“Home Affairs has been bilking Zimbabweans, most of them poor, for more than a decade.”

Also targeted for legal action is VFS Global, owned by one of the world’s largest private equity firms, US-based Blackstone.

VFS Global is responsible for processing the exemption permits on behalf of Home Affairs.

Attorneys representing Zepha have written to VFS Global asking it to account for the number of applications it processed under the ZEP system, and its predecessor, the Zimbabwe Special Dispensation Permit (ZSP).

Zepha estimates that close to half a billion rand would have been paid over by Zimbabweans applying for these permits.

“We will not hesitate to take legal action against Blackstone, in the United States, using lawyers based there,” adds Chitando.

“We intend to mobilise civil society in the US to expose the practice of never-ending expensive applications and extensions, instead of simply providing ZEP holders with permanent residence permits.”

ZEP holders have started receiving notices from FNB bank that their permits will no longer be valid after 31 December 2022, and must be replaced with a ‘mainstream’ visa after the Department of Home Affairs decided to end the ZEP system.

The notice does not explain what will happen to those FNB customers who are ZEP holders and do not qualify for a ‘mainstream’ visa, though many fear their accounts will be closed, thereby throttling their ability to continue living and working in South Africa.

The ZEP system has been in operation in various forms since 2009, allowing Zimbabweans to live, work, study and conduct business in SA. It was introduced to legitimise the status of Zimbabweans in SA, many of whom fled the political and economic chaos at home.

Last year Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced the ZEP scheme would be terminated at the end of 2021. He then extended the termination period by a year to allow an estimated 178 000 permit holders to apply for alternative visas.

ZEP representatives in SA believe Home Affairs is responding to and fuelling xenophobia, already at dangerously high levels after massive job losses brought on by Covid lockdowns.

Motsoaledi’s decision to suspend the scheme is being challenged in three separate court cases brought by the Helen Suzman Foundation, the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit Holders Association (Zepha), and the Zimbabwe Immigration Federation.

All three are asking the courts to set aside the minister’s decision to suspend the ZEP system, pointing to the disastrous impact it will have on the region if potentially hundreds of thousands of people are forced to repatriate to a country with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. These cases are likely to be heard in October.

One of the reasons cited by Home Affairs for suspending the permit scheme is to ease unemployment in SA – though this is refuted by the Zimbabwe Immigration Federation, which argues in its court papers that the 178 000 ZEP holders constitute just 0.3% of SA’s population of about 60 million.

There is some evidence of back-tracking by Home Affairs, after some ZEP holders received letters from the department’s director-general Livhuwani Makhode that ZEP ‘waiver applications’ are being reconsidered by the minister pending legal advice.

“It has come to our attention that the banks have been weaponised by the government to enforce the shakedown of ZEP holders, who risk their accounts being frozen if they do not apply for visas many do not qualify for, because Home Affairs has made documentation all but impossible,” says Chitando.

FNB’s response

“FNB is monitoring developments regarding the status of Zimbabwean Exemption Permits (ZEPs) and communicates regularly to customers who may be affected. Our latest communication to customers who are ZEP holders aims to inform them about the most recent directive from the Department of Home Affairs and the options available to them.

“The term ‘mainstream visas’ in our customer communication generally refers to visas that are prescribed under the Immigration Act,” the bank states.

“We are committed to helping our customers to ensure that their bank accounts are used and managed in accordance with the relevant laws. Our customers can also contact us directly if they have any questions or need assistance with their bank accounts.”

Moneyweb reached out to VFS Global for comment, but had not received a reply by the time of publication. – Moneyweb

www.samigration.com