The advent of undocumented migrants in South Africa is a very hotly contested issue, mainly because indeed there are many migrants that should have been documented but for the systems and authorities that make it impossible to be documented.
The major reasons for the many undocumented migrants includes among others:
- Failure to obtain any documentation from their countries of origin because of complicated systems
- Expensive to obtain documents in sending countries due to scarcity of jobs and the pricing by governments of such services or passports when people are unemployed.
- South African Home Affairs administrative action which makes it impossible for those with documents to maintain a legal status in the country which include the following:
- Like Zimbabweans who allocated 90 days into South Africa per year, officials at the border however do not ask travellers to choose the length of stay in the country but instead give them 7 days, 14 days or so without knowing purpose of visit and desired period of stay.
- This leads to a person overstaying and the thus being declared an undesirable visitor for whatever stipulated period which leads to people crossing into the country illegally or without documentation because they cannot be legally in the country whilst barred from entering the country.
- Those with asylum documents which the refugee and asylum centres do not renew on date of renewal and send them back and give them another date until their documents are regarded to have expired and they can no longer be renewed.
- Refugee and asylum centres that do not renew documents unless the person pay money to the middlemen they work with to ensure only those who pay are helped while those on the queues are left there unattended until documents expire
Recent Comments