Balancing the migrant flow
Home affairs proposes to reshape regime
ONE in every 113 of the global population is on the move, says the UN. Levels of migration due to war and the quest for economic opportunities have reached new heights as the war in Syria rages on and the business of people smuggling thrives. While many of those fleeing face persecution or death, just as many are economic migrants desperate to escape poverty and make new lives for themselves.
SA knows this story well. Since 1994, when the country opened up to the world and the continent, it has been a destination of choice for hundreds of thousands of migrants, both genuine refugees and those seeking economic opportunity. According to international agencies, SA is the fifth-largest recipient country of migrants.
But immigration policy is a mess. While people whose skills are considered desirable find it inordinately difficult to get documentation, low-skill migrants have flooded in, contributing to increased social instability and tension. As SA has a non-encampment policy for asylum seekers and refugees, hundreds of thousands of economic migrants clog the system under the cover of seeking refugee status. While they wait, the courts have determined that they may work and study.
Last week Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba quietly unveiled dramatic proposals that will reshape the immigration regime. Asylum seekers will no longer have the right to work or study while they wait for their status to be determined. Refugee processing centres will cater for all their needs with the assistance of international aid agencies.
There is a suggestion that by-laws regulate the activities of refugees — read Somali business people — who settle in communities. Permanent residence and citizenship will be harder to get. While in the past, five years in the country qualified a person for permanent residence, this will no longer be the case. Permanent residents will also not easily be able to get citizenship, which the proposals say should be “exceptional”.
A pragmatic view is taken on economic migration from our Southern African Development Community (Sadc) neighbours. It’s neither realistic to close the borders to those seeking to work in SA nor to open the borders to all. A work permit system that will operate on quotas for each of the neighbouring countries is tentatively suggested.
The proposals promise that some things will get easier. It will be easier for the families of skilled migrants to get documentation and to work and study; qualification for skilled visas will be based on a points system; and foreign graduates who study here will be encouraged to stay and work.
There is no doubt that attempts to confine asylum seekers to processing centres in border areas will be roundly condemned by humanitarian agencies. Human rights advocates have fought hard to extend the rights of asylum seekers. But equally, it can also
Those who react with emotion from either perspective should be encouraged to engage more honestly with the debate
be anticipated that SA’s poor and unemployed won’t welcome the idea that work visas be granted to quotas of foreigners from the Sadc, who will compete with them for scarce job opportunities.
But those who react with emotion from either perspective should be encouraged to engage more honestly with the debate.
SA needs a migration policy that balances the rights of its own citizens with its responsibilities to refugees, and also takes into account the reality of generations of economic migration.
Finding this balance will be difficult and is part of the reason the discussion has been avoided for so long.
But further avoidance will mean we muddle along with a dysfunctional policy regime that breeds corruption, violence, xenophobia and social instability. Put to work in a positive way, inward migration can build a country and bring skills, brain-gain and diversity.