Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber has welcomed Cabinet’s approval of a revised immigration White Paper, describing it as a major reform that could tighten asylum rules, including limiting claims from migrants passing through “safe” third countries.
Lubabalo Lesolle/Gallo Images
- South Africa’s Cabinet approved a revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration, and Refugee Protection, marking a major reform to its frameworks.
- Key changes include the “First Safe Country Principle,” new visa categories, and a point-based system for citizenship.
- Critics highlight risks to constitutional rights and stress administrative inefficiencies over legislative issues.
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber has hailed the revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection as the “most fundamental reform” of South Africa’s citizenship and immigration frameworks.
Cabinet last week announced that it has approved the revised White Paper. Its previous iteration was introduced during the previous administration, before Schreiber’s term.
“Following last week’s Cabinet approval of the revised White Paper, the Department of Home Affairs will initiate the process of drafting and tabling in Parliament the requisite legislative amendments to implement the revised White Paper,” reads a statement from Schreiber’s office, released on Wednesday.
Most likely, the aspect of the White Paper that would cause the most controversy is that it would implement the “First Safe Country Principle”, which states that asylum seekers who have been granted refugee status or lawful protection in another country, or who pass through safe third countries to reach South Africa, are ineligible for asylum in South Africa.
This is designed to combat the phenomenon of applicants “picking and choosing” South Africa as their preferred destination to claim asylum, while passing through other safe countries on the way, according to the statement.
READ | Sweeping immigration reforms proposed to combat abuse of asylum laws
To mitigate against the risk of refoulement, this reform will require the Home Affairs Minister to annually designate safe third countries that have ratified the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and to withdraw such designation as and when the need arises.
The White Paper mandates government to enter into bilateral agreements with safe third countries in order for the burden of migration in sub-Saharan Africa to be shared on a more equitable basis.
By taking this approach, South Africa intends to support the implementation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) route-based approach that seeks to move away from focusing on individual countries towards entire routes of migration.
The White Paper will also introduce objective criteria for naturalisation and an annual window period for the submission of citizenship applications to prevent backlogs, a Citizenship Advisory Panel (CAP) to objectively consider and advise on applications, and a point-based system for economic pathways to citizenship.
READ | SA’s first online instant visa — using ‘selfie’ tech — is ready to go
The new system will operate in parallel with the existing principle that a child with at least one parent who is a South African citizen at the time of birth automatically becomes a citizen, while a child born to non-South African parents must apply for naturalisation.
Among the immigration system reforms are the introduction of new visa categories for remote work, startups, skilled workers (which combines the existing critical skills and general work visas into one category), sports and culture, and the replacement of corporate visas with sectoral work visas for specific industries.
Schreiber said:
The approval of the revised White Paper by Cabinet marks another important milestone on our journey to fundamentally reform South Africa’s civics and immigration systems.
“The policy direction outlined in the revised White Paper charts a new course for our country to build modern, efficient and secure systems that serve South Africa’s interests.
“I express my sincere appreciation to every stakeholder who participated in the broad-ranging consultation process.”
“We will now work with the same focus and determination to convert the revised White Paper into legislative amendments that consolidate and comprehensively reform our country’s citizenship, immigration and refugee protection systems, ensuring that they are fit for purpose for generations to come.”
In its submission in February this year as part of the public participation process on the revised White Paper, the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town said that many of the issues with the current framework cited in the revised White Paper are more related to bureaucratic challenges than legislative deficiencies, and many of the major proposals “would result in a significant reduction of many fundamental constitutional rights and represent a retrogression from working towards the full realisation of those rights”.
The centre said:
A major gap in the revised White Paper is the lack of reference to the need to align our migration policies with regional integration and regional migration patterns.
In their submission, the Immigration and Refugee Law Committee of the Law Society of South Africa (LSSA) stated that the White Paper reflected a genuine intention to modernise South Africa’s immigration framework and improve efficiency.
“However … many of the proposed reforms risk misdirecting attention away from the central challenges, such as persistent administrative dysfunction, inconsistent and unlawful decision-making, application backlogs and ongoing noncompliance with court orders by the department,” the submission reads.
