By James Hall
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 8 2003 (IPS)

After years of consultation with labour unions, business organisations and academicians, a new Immigration Act was unveiled late in 2002.

This replacement for the notorious Aliens Control Act, which for years was used to block black African immigration, pleased South Africa’ s largest labour federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

The new policy is liked by unionists because of stringent – critics say draconian – bureaucratic requirements intended to protect South African workers from alleged job insecurity feared from an influx of immigrant workers.

COSATU is closely aligned with the ruling political party of President Thabo Mbeki, the African National Congress (ANC), whose rise to power was assisted by the support of black workers.

Under the new system, the Department of Home Affairs must create and enforce a quota system for immigration after consultation with the departments of industry, trade and labour. Foreign workers must obtain certification, requiring another bureaucratic maze for immigrants to endure.

The business community and immigrant advocacy groups say the new law stifles economic growth because of what they say is an inaccurate assumption that South African workers must be protected from foreigners.

According to the Johannesburg publication Business Day, – Slow, pointless bureaucratic procedures that have prevented foreigners from bringing their knowledge and energy to South Africa in the past will not be alleviated and in some respects are likely to be reinforced."

One economist complained, ôCurrent policy assumes that every job occupied by a non-South African means one job less for a South African; in other words, that the labour market is zero-sum. At all levels of the labour market, from the least to the most highly skilled, foreigners are being denied temporary work permits or are meeting with obstructions on the basis of the unproven assumption that in every case their mere presence would disadvantage South Africans. (But) managed immigration and migration can be used to stimulate economic growth and create jobs for South Africans."

Business analysts say South Africa suffers from a shortage of skilled, readily employable people who have the talents required by employers. This shortage has been exacerbated by AIDS, which has reduced the availability of skilled workers. A COSATU report indicated that a quarter of the labour force constituting its core constituency as a workers federation is HIV positive in the central Gauteng province, where industrial parks ring metropolitan Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Government figures put the prevalence of HIV among adults in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, the location of the key port of Durban and Indian Ocean tourist resorts, at over 30 percent.

In answer to South Africa’s growing workers shortages, the South African Chamber of Business has called for an open-door policy toward immigration that is driven by market needs.

ôWe need to do more than sit back and wait for skilled immigrants to notice us, we have to be proactive," said a source with the chamber. ôSouth Africa needs to aggressively recruit the people we need. That means sending recruitment agents throughout Africa and further abroad, and ensure that the recruits are securely settled here so we don’t lose them again."

Underlying the new immigration bill is the belief that skilled immigration takes jobs away from locally skilled people. This is the philosophy of the labour federations. However, it is disputed by others.

ôThis is a belief that cannot be sustained by the reality of the South African economy," says Howard Kunene, an agronomist in Nelspruit, an agricultural centre that depends on migrant farm labour. ôThere is no South African employer who would look at two equally qualified candidates, one a local and one an immigrant, and give the job to the latter. Costs are higher for the immigrant, usually in terms of settling him and her into a new community."

A shortage of skilled workers is worsened by emigration. The decades-long trend of skilled white professionals leaving the country began in the mid-1980s, when apartheid-era authorities were unable to totally suppress black township uprisings as they had with earlier protests staged by the nation’s disenfranchised majority. The outflow increased during the transition to democracy in the early 1990s.

When heart transplant pioneer Dr. Christian Bernard left South Africa, the nation’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela, expressed the frustration of many who sought to build a new nation when he said, ôJust let him go."

Because black education was designed to be substandard during apartheid, no pool of skilled black workers and managers was immediately available to replace emigrating whites. Today, immigration reform advocates couple the need for improved training and education with a short-term open door policy toward accepting skilled foreigners.

There is a ôdesperate" need for more foreign teachers in the nation’s schools and universities, an education ministry report disclosed.

ôThe view that skilled immigrants prevent South Africans from finding jobs should be emphatically rejected. The opposite is true," wrote Ann Bernstein in a report issued by the Centre for Development and Enterprise, which she heads as executive director.

ôResearchers estimate that every skilled professional directly or indirectly generates numerous unskilled jobs. Foreign entrepreneurs create new wealth and taxes. Each new skilled immigrant will create jobs for South Africans simply by going about their business, buying goods and services and paying tax," wrote Bernstein, an advocate for an open door immigration policy.

Some critics of the new Immigration Act call it xenophobic, an ironic charge given modern South Africa’s emergence from a non-inclusive racist regime. Indeed, the apartheid immigration policy was racially-based and its replacement has an obligation to be non-racial, government insists.

A government publication noted, ôImmigration (policy) is designed primarily to attract skilled migrants. The country is currently experiencing brain drain mainly to western countries."

A Microsoft Corporation study estimated that the shortage of IT (information technology) workers in South Africa is between 30,000 and 200,000.

Emigration has drained key professions of experienced workers, adding to the urgency of facilitating immigration to fill vacancies. Emigration is highest in education (34 percent of recorded emigrants), engineering (29 percent), accountancy (24 percent), and medical and dental professions (13 percent).

The immigration assistance web site Migrantworker.com complained, ôSouth Africa’s new immigration policy that has at last been approved and is ready for implementation was not worth the wait because it has not eased the recruitment of skilled foreign labour as originally intended. No wonder it was received with mixed feelings including the drafters of the proposals."

A report from the Department of Home Affairs admitted, ôBecause of our past, South Africans tend to take a negative view of immigration, regarding immigrants as posing unwarranted competition and potential security risks."

In fairness to the authors of the Immigration Act, if there is a wariness toward immigration some critics feel is xenophobic. Unrestricted illegal migration became such a crisis in post-apartheid South Africa that a 1999 White Paper on International Migration recommended giving immigration authorities sweeping powers of detention, and called for the creation of a virtual gulag of detention facilities for illegal aliens.

The Immigration Service was to be given the power to detain suspected illegal aliens for up to 48 hours without a warrant. Meanwhile, legitimate business investors and prospective workers could enter without a visa if they could post a bond with a credit card.

Another problem to be addressed is the requirement that immigrant business people must invest a minimum of R1.5 million (167,000 U.S. dollars) to obtain a permanent residence permit. The labour unions are silent on this matter because their membership is not composed of entrepreneurs. However, the business community notes the high investment requirement relegates small and medium entrepreneurs (SMMEs) to temporary residency permit status, impeding their success and contribution to the economy. A Southern African Migration Project report found that foreign-owned SMMEs create an average of 4.1 jobs.

The Department of Labour estimates that there are five million illegal aliens in South Africa, a nation with a population of 47 million. No satisfying answer to the problem has been formulated, as was evidenced by the reaction to the Immigration Act.

A tide of unskilled illegal immigrants continues to cross the border from poorer neighbour countries, while skilled foreign workers are seen by labour unions and workers as unfair competition to be blocked.

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