Zimbabwe special permit: Less than 4% have made representations to govt - home affairs dept

 

News24 – 7 September 2022

• Of the 178 000 Zimbabwe Exemption Permit holders in South Africa, about 6 000 made representations to say why their permits should not be terminated.  
• The Helen Suzman Foundation has taken the government to court for discontinuing the permits.
• The permits expired in December 2021 but were renewed for 12 months.

Less than four percent of Zimbabwe Exemption Permit (ZEP) holders have made representations to the Department of Home Affairs to say why their documents should not be terminated later this year.

This emerged in court papers the department filed at the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria.

The ZEP is a special dispensation permit that was established more than 10 years ago, providing legal protection to an estimated 178 000 Zimbabweans who live, work and study in South Africa.

In January, Cabinet decided that the arrangement should be terminated by December and that permit holders should apply for a visa to remain in South Africa on the basis of a list of critical skills.

In the case before court, the department said in its papers that only 6 000 out of the 178 000 permit holders responded to the call Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi's made last year for Zimbabweans to state their case before the dispensation lapses.

In June, the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) said it would take the government to court for discontinuing the permits, saying that the decision would turn ZEP holders in South Africa into undocumented migrants and force them to return.

It said affected Zimbabweans would face similar conditions to what led them to flee from their home countries.

However, in the court papers, Home Affairs director-general Livhuwani Tommy Makhode said the minister had allowed ZEP holders to apply for visas as contemplated by the Immigration Act.

Makhode said a decision not to grant further exemptions hadn't been made.

He said: 

This is clear from the fact that ZEP holders are entitled to and were invited to make representations as to why their ZEPs should not be terminated and/or why their ZEPs should be extended for a period longer than [the] 12-month extension granted by the minister.

He said the only decision HSF could adequately seek to challenge was the minister's decision to extend the ZEPs for 12 months.

"If regard is had to the grounds of review, it is clear that HSF contends that because ZEP holders have lived and worked in South Africa for approximately a decade, any decision not to grant a further blanket exemption to all ZEP holders would amount to an unjustifiable breach of the fundamental rights of ZEP holders.

"In the six-month period since the minister's decision to extend the ZEPs for 12 months was announced, only 6 000 of the approximately 178 000 ZEP holders have taken the opportunity to make representations to the minister," he said.

Makhode added the relief sought was "legally unsustainable" and added that any ZEP holder who meets the requirements of Section 26 of the Immigration Act was entitled to apply for permanent residence on any of the grounds contained in that section.

WATCH | Podcast companion: The Story of Joseph Dhafana

Joseph Dhafana is one of the thousands of Zimbabweans who hold a Zimbabwean Exemption Permit. He has until the end of this year to migrate to another permit, but if his application for a business permit is unsuccessful, he faces deportation.

"On the evidence, HSF cannot demonstrate that any application for permanent residence made in terms of s26 by ZEP holders will be rejected." 

Makhode also lambasted the HSF for not putting up evidence on how many ZEP holders intended to lodge or have lodged applications for general work visas or how many were not able to meet the requirements. 

Makhode also said it was estimated that there were more than a million undocumented Zimbabweans living in South Africa, and that an "order that declares that it is unconstitutional to deny further exemptions to ZEP holders until the Zimbabwe economy has recovered sufficiently, whatever that might mean would entitle any undocumented Zimbabweans to compel the minister to grant his/her an exemption from the provisions of the Immigration Act because of the economic situation in that country". 

He said this, in turn, would establish a right to remain in the country for economic migrants who do not meet the requirements for asylum.

www.samigration.com

 

 

 

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