ANDISIWE MAKINANA
DESPITE South Africa’s pressing need for skills, the majority of work permits issued by the Department of Home Affairs to foreigners are issued to low-skilled and unskilled workers.
Yesterday, MPs were shocked to hear that South Africa issued 135 000 work permits to foreigners between April 2010 and March this year, with the majority of them in the low and unskilled labour categories.
About 67 000 work permits were issued in the first quarter of this financial year (March to June), with almost 90 percent of them going to Zimbabweans.
The department’s deputy director-general for immigration, Jackson McKay, said the numbers had been pushed up by the recent Zimbabwe Dispensation Project that ended in July.
McKay was briefing a joint meeting of Parliament’s oversight committees on labour and home affairs “on the presence of foreign nationals within the South African labour market”.
He revealed that in the three months between March and June, 59 363 work permits had been issued to Zimbabweans, but only 672 corporate work permits, 699 exceptional skills permits, 3 202 general work permits, 1 252 permits that fall under the quota system and 1 719 work permits in terms of the provisions of Section 19 (5) of the Immigration Act (which provides for intra-company transfers) were issued during the same period.
The department couldn’t say, however, how many professional foreigners there were seeking jobs in the country, or give a breakdown of their professions, countries of origin and whether they had entered legally and had work permits.
DA MP George Boinamo wanted to know whether there were any measures in place to ensure foreigners were not employed in jobs for which South Africans were qualified “to ensure locals are not made to roam the streets with useful qualifications”.
“If you are not careful, these are some of the things that cause xenophobia,” Boinamo warned.
Another DA MP, Ian Ollis, also questioned the high number of permits issued to low or unskilled foreigners.
“It seems we are giving the permits to the wrong category. It looks like we’ve been too easy with the wrong kinds of categories of people that we are bringing into the country,” he said.
McKay responded that it was important to do a study of migration trends to South Africa to get an understanding of the matter.
Many people came to the country who didn’t qualify according to the Immigration Act, which looked at high-end or highly skilled labour.
“We need to look at the pushing through factors and we will find the answers on why these low-skilled permits are being issued.”
He said low-skilled and unskilled migrants were not catered for under the present permitting regime, which was a “major weakness of the current Immigration Act and a contributor to irregular migration to the country, as well as the abuse of the refugee regime, where a lot of economic migrants are using the asylum seeker route to come into the country”.
McKay said many economic migrants, people who sought jobs, were exploiting a loophole in the law by applying for an asylum seeker permit which was in fact a work permit as it allowed one to work and study and was issued free of charge.