Minister Naledi Pandor: Transcript copy weekly media briefing Pretoria
Question: How true is it that the five-year co-habitation rule will come into effect as opposed to the three months that was in place? ...Minister Naledi Pandor interjects to clarify…It is the requirement that you prove that you are in a permanent relationship and it has existed for five years or more…
Answer, Immigration Management Services Deputy Director-General, Mr Jacky Mckay: It is five years, it was never three months.
Question: In terms of the smart ID cards, what if I lose my ID book now? Can I apply for the smart ID card or do I have to wait until I am invited to apply? Also, in terms of the fines for overstaying your permits, how much is that? Is it within someone’s means to pay? How much was it before it was taken out?
Answer (Mr Mckay): The fines are between one and three thousand Rand and if you have overstayed for more than a month you will be charged the maximum fine of three thousand Rand …Minister responds to the question on Smart ID cards… For the moment we are not extending applications for the smart card to categories that fall outside our pilot pool. I believe we will be able to extend once we have seventy offices available but with the current thirty we cannot manage the numbers. From Pretoria News, you will recall the scene we had a week ago which was quite chaotic – and that was only senior citizens – so clearly, until we have grown the office numbers to a level that allows us to have a wider call we will still stick to the pool.
From 1 April we are going to go wider than we have at the moment. So if you lose it, I suggest you wait until April but in the interim you will have to apply for the temporary ID or a green ID book. I am trying to assess whether we have sufficient capacity to actually stop some offices from accepting green ID book applications so that we entrench the smart card more into our society and systems.
Question: With regards to the draft regulations for the visas, I am going to concentrate on the business visa; I know that there are foreign nationals who have come to South Africa and have set up successful businesses and who might be deemed undesirable, what is going to happen to them? Are you going to ask them to reapply for their business visas? Maybe some of them may not even have visas to be in South Africa.
Answer (Minister Naledi Pandor): If a foreign national who does not have a legal permit has a business, they are illegal in the country and this is one of the areas I referred to in the cluster of government statement earlier this week; that because of poor capacity in immigration, particularly Inspectorate, we have allowed a number of illegal practices to continue to exist in the country. And, we have to develop the capacity in immigration to be able to address illegal practices.
We have allowed illegal migration, we have allowed persons to set up businesses without permits, we have allowed persons to get work permits fraudulently, employers are employing persons who do not have legal status; all of these things have to be attended to and addressed by strengthening immigration in South Africa because no country allows itself to have immigration laws abused and neglected in the way that, to some degree, South Africa has allowed things to happen. It is an area that I believe we have to give attention to. Any person who holds a permit that is going to expire has to apply for renewal in terms of the new regulations.
Question: About the work permits, to they still need to advertise the positions in the publications or is that going to fall away?
Answer: Advertising is a requirement, obviously all over the world this is a normal practice. Some countries are far stricter because they ask you to provide them with a list of applicants and so on; we have not gone there yet but I think we have been less than attentive to the issue of whether the jobs have been advertised. What we may need to consider in future, is looking at electronic advertising but, of course, not everybody enjoys access to the web and so on…but it is an area that is increasingly being used by many young people who are looking for work. I think we have got to be modern as a department but yes, there would have to be advertising.
Question: In terms of the situation at the Byron Place office with the senior citizens last week, I know that the DG of the department was there but I have not visited the offices myself again, has the situation been cleared up? Have the elderly citizens been attended to?
Answer: The situation was attended to and it has improved…I was there on Monday…the numbers are still significant but I thought it was a far much better treatment; they had benches and the managers were out managing the queues far better…I think we have improvement. I was at Akasia on Monday…I actually worked behind the counter myself and many of the senior citizens were appreciative…but I still noted that they were standing and I think we should look at whether we should have benches as a temporary measure. We also had a problem where we had one cashier for what is a very busy office so we put in an extra cashier desk at the frontline counters…in fact I got exhausted working there but I spent the whole day and it was very interesting to observe our management of what is a very big project.
Question: How difficult, under the new draft regulations, is it to get a visa to come to South Africa? Does it become easier or difficult to an extent that we see a spike in illegal immigrants?
Answer: South Africa is a very accessible country…if you apply for our permits you get them…and as you know, unlike many countries, if you are on a visitor’s visa, you are able to extend your visa while in the country…so that has been the practise but anyone can come and visit as long as they are not a terrorist, a human trafficker, a murderer or wanted via Interpol for a range of crimes. We are a very accessible country, our immigration laws are very progressive and you will see from the growth which is outside world growth numbers of tourists that we are a very popular and accessible destination.
I think part of what Government needs to do is to see immigration as an opportunity but also to be clear that you can have security threats as we saw in Kenya for example. You cannot be lax about immigration and to some degree our borders are a threat…they are porous, we need to ensure that our ports of entry are well managed…there are challenges in the system but I think we are very progressive and open as a country and as a society.
