Foreigners more essential than ever as fed-up locals exit

Prejudices can be costly. In this country, at this time, they could be particularly pricey. The prejudice we can ill afford now is directed at skilled people. Not all skilled people — just those who don’t look the same, or come from the same places, as those who are accepted.

At the best of times SA badly needs people with skills. But this is not the best of times. As last week’s column mentioned, it is a time of national gloom. Which means, among other things, that people with qualifications are said to be leaving in numbers. This is “said to be” because it is common here to talk of “huge” levels of emigration without reliable numbers to back the claim.

But that people are leaving is not in dispute. Which means the country needs people with skills more than ever.

There is one obvious way a country can replace skills it loses through emigration: by encouraging skilled people to immigrate. Luckily, we do not need to plead: there are more than enough people from other parts of the world, particularly elsewhere on the continent, who want to work here.

But they may not be allowed to work or invest here because this country treats immigrants as a problem, not a solution.

At a time when the economy desperately needs energy and skills, politicians still talk as if people who have much to contribute are a problem if they were nasty enough to be born elsewhere. The cabinet minister who told a newspaper that the government plans to decide in which industries people from other countries will be allowed to trade is an example.

Given attitudes to immigrants here, voices will inevitably insist that we don’t need foreigners’ abilities, we must encourage home-grown skills. But we don’t have enough and won’t have enough until and unless we fix education and training systems, which will take years to change.

Even then we will need the skills of people from elsewhere

— no country has all the skills it needs among its own citizens; those who succeed are those that welcome skilled immigrants.

This country’s failure to do this in the numbers we need is a product of prejudices. The most obvious is the irrational bias that says that where a person is born is more important than what they have to offer.

But there is another prejudice at work — one that fails to see that people don’t need fancy qualifications to be skilled and offer the economy what it needs.

Formal businesses are happy to lobby the government to allow them to employ people with skills they need. They are silent when skilled people who create wealth but who run their own businesses on the streets, not in air-conditioned offices, are driven from the economy.

When violence against immigrants broke out in inner cities, there was concern that this would damage economic links with the rest of the continent, but no worry about the far more important problem that people who help keep the economy afloat were chased away.

COLONIAL HANG-UPS

This country’s colonial hangups blind it to the reality that you don’t need to operate in an office or work for large companies to create jobs and grow the economy. The Mozambican builder or Zimbabwean panel beater — and, very often, the South African who operates from a back yard — are seen as drags on the economy, not a key to its return to health.

If this country’s politicians and citizens put aside their prejudices and stare economic reality in the face, they will see we need any skilled person we can get. Allowing immigrants to work here in safety is not charity, it is essential to the economy’s growth.

YOU DON’T NEED TO OPERATE IN AN OFFICE OR WORK FOR LARGE COMPANIES TO CREATE JOBS AND GROW THE ECONOMY