Home Affairs is trying to clear a backlog of 56,543 visas – which may be done by June 2024
Business Insider SA | 15 December 2022
• South Africa's Department of Home Affairs is struggling with a major visa backlog.
• The backlog includes more than 56,000 applications across all visa categories.
• Home Affairs hopes to have cleared these by June 2024.
• In the meantime, average turnaround times for visas have grown far beyond what the department's performance plan dictates.
South Africa's Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is battling its way through a vast backlog of visa applications, which it hopes to have cleared by June 2024.
Home Affairs is drowning in outstanding visa applications. This backlog, made worse by the department's disastrous decision to centralise the adjudication of long-term visas, has led to longer processing times, frustrated foreign applicants, and missed work opportunities.
This seemingly never-ending backlog has caused the DHA to issue consecutive blanket extensions to visa and waiver applicants, with the most recent deadline given as 31 March 2023.
Under fierce pressure, the DHA has been accused, by IBN Immigration Solutions, of unjustly rejecting applications. "Now, it seems that Home Affairs officials have clear KPIs to adjudicate X number [around 20] applications per day," noted IBN Immigration Solutions' Andreas Krensel in November. "This leads to a very, very high number of rejections."
And according to a recent parliamentary answer given by the Minister of Home Affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi, there's no quick fix to clear the visa backlog.
"The current backlog across all visa categories is 56,543," said Motsoaledi in response to a question posed by DA MP Thembisile Khanyile.
"The department envisages to have cleared the current backlog by June 2024 for all categories of visas."
In the meantime, the turnaround times for visa applications have grown far beyond those listed in the department's Annual Performance Plan (APP).
The turnaround time for applications for critical skills visas is four weeks, according to the DHA's APP. Currently, the average response time is four to 10 weeks.
Similarly, it should, according to the APP, take Home Affairs eight weeks to process business and general work visas. Currently, the average response time is eight to 14 weeks.
www.samigration.com