SA’s immigration proposals - false claims and poor logic
- Loren B Landau and Rebecca Walker
Experts say the White Paper’s proposals are vague and seek to solve problems that are not about immigration.
The South African government recently issued a long-awaited policy statement – called a – outlining proposed changes to the country’s asylum and immigration system. More than 20 years after its first post-apartheid immigration legislation , immigration remains a . Getting this policy right could help with South Africa’s economic recovery, increase regional prosperity, and heighten security for citizens and migrants alike.
A general election is and the issue is at the heart of .
will welcome the far-reaching efforts to reform frameworks that currently work for none but a few . Most will embrace proposed initiatives to better train officials and reduce corruption but will agree on little else.
Human rights advocates will decry proposals to relocate the processing of asylum applications to the border and to narrow immigrants’ channels to permanent residency and citizenship. The stated imperative to “develop a well-coordinated strategy of tracking down illegal foreigners” will raise their hackles. Anti-immigrant activists and leaders will say the proposals .
Collectively we have in South Africa and elsewhere for almost 40 years. Based on this experience, we find that the White Paper does not provide an empirical foundation for effective, developmental policy reform.
Instead, it offers vague proposals to address problems that are less about immigration than bureaucratic and political mismanagement. It provides a smokescreen to hide government faults. Perhaps it’s intended to distract voters in the from the in South Africa.
False claims and lapses of logic
What is most unsettling about the paper is how the government invents its own social reality, and then offers vague and poorly considered proposals to solve nonexistent problems.
Case in point: the document states that 150,997 people in South Africa have been granted citizenship by naturalisation (presumably since the 2002 ). This number is used to justify radically narrowing pathways to citizenship. Yet, this figure represents less than 0.2% of the country’s population of .
The suggestion that citizenship is easily accessed – especially through the asylum process – is bizarre. This could only happen if asylum cases were effectively processed. .
Since the , only . Many of these have since left South Africa or needed to reapply (so they may have been counted more than once). Of these 300,000, have become permanent residents, let alone citizens.
The White Paper reaches its tragi-comic apex by including a substantial list of legal cases that civil society has won against the Department of Home Affairs for . The cases are supposedly so numerous that
there are several instances wherein the DHA has been slapped with court orders of which it has not been aware of the proceedings.
Rather than bring itself into line, the department wants the law altered to prevent these court challenges. And it argues that without legal reform, scapegoating and violence against immigrants will continue.
The White Paper reasons that excluding immigrants from South Africa will protect them by making Home Affairs more legally compliant, and South Africans more tolerant and welcoming.
The paper’s most remarkable self-delusion is in its estimates of between 5 million and 13 million immigrants. . The most reliable source of information on population data, , indicates that the percentage of immigrants in the country has declined in the last decade. The numbers , but the total number of foreign-born residents (including exiles, spouses, investors, and others) is – somewhere around 4% of the total population of . The previous census (2010) put the figure at .
The White Paper suggests that strict laws are needed “to protect the rights” of South African citizens against “the harsh realities” that there are simply not enough resources for everyone. Yet the question is: what exactly do South Africans need to be protected from?
Misplaced blame
Immigration can be a challenge. But this does not explain why South Africans spend days without light, water, jobs, or hope of addressing economic inequality. Immigrants are not the reason why the or . And immigrants are .
Missing too from the White Paper is a grounded discussion of how mobility and immigration schemes can meet skills gaps, promote investment, and create jobs across the region. Whether in the or , most careful research suggests immigration has positive economic effects.
Nowhere is there reference to the careful analysis of , or research involving the , , , and .
Instead, the White Paper offers an almost Soviet style programme where experts will designate entry requirements based on predictions of needed skills. The unpredictability of the regional economy, the high economic and human costs of state-managed labour systems, and the diplomatic benefits of a more regionally integrated labour market suggest another model is needed.
It is another illusion that a government that – , , , or – can somehow predict and carefully manage a regional migrant labour system. It is equally fantastical to think that it should.
Imagined problems, impractical solutions
The White Paper does not outline an approach to improve immigration policy. Its proposals are vague and the problems it seeks to solve are not about immigration.
This appears to be part of a trend: the poorly researched and largely unsubstantiated 2017 similarly overlooked in favour of “data” from religious NGOs in the US and .
Both examples point to a government lacking capacity to empirically analyse the world and develop solutions to real problems. If not that, they suggest a government wilfully deceiving its citizenry: making immigrants the scapegoat for its own failings. Given the content of the White Paper, it is likely both.
, Co-Director of the Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½-Oxford Mobility Governance Lab, and , Research Associate at the African Centre for Migration & Society,
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