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Addressing the lack of critical skills in South Africa, Department of Home Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor has promised to allow more skilled, bread-winning foreigners into South Africa by means of re-visiting South African immigration practices. Due to the very favourable lifestyle and the dynamics of an emerging market, South Africa has over the last five to ten years become a particularly sought after country. Especially British, Dutch and German citizen are continuously looking for work in South Africa’s main business centres, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. According to the Iol Lifestyle South Africa has become so popular, there had been a 30 percent increase year on year in foreigners wanting to live in South Africa.

Multi-national companies, investors and entrepreneurs, seeking critical skills in South Africa, will be relieved to hear that the improvements in immigration practices will be focused on them too, thereby addressing Business Permits and Quota Work Permits. According to Initiate Immigration “a Quota Work Visa is issued and granted by the Department of Home Affairs to a pre-determined number of foreigner nationals who meet their qualifications requirements and/or a prescribed number of years of work experience. Despite jobs having to be advertised, the quota work permit is beneficial to job seekers as they do not have to produce a job offer or employment contract at the time of the application.

Despite South Africa’s improved Braintrain Retention Ranking (Improvement from 80 to 47 over the past five years), the Department of Home Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor mentioned the braintrain as one of the main reasons to attract critical skills from overseas.

The Braintrain described a rapid move of qualified employees overseas, facing a bleak job situation in their own country and being drawn by competitive packages overseas. In her speech Pandor elaborated on the fact that for a growing economy like South Africa brainy foreigners with the right qualifications should be used to fill the gap.

During her budget speech Ms Pandor mentioned that if accurate data was available about the extend of the skills shortage, the Department of Home Affairs could respond to this need by means of issuing Work Permits such as the Quota Work Permit for employees and the Business and Intra-Company Transfer Permits for investors, entrepreneurs and multinational companies, preferring to use their own skilled staff from their overseas offices.

Nalendi Pandor further described, which target groups will benefit from the revisited immigration policy “the investors and the entrepreneurs who will create the businesses and the jobs of tomorrow, and the scientists who will help keep South Africa at the heart of the great advances in medicine, biotech, advanced manufacturing and communications. They merit a permit policy that shows we are ready to compete with other countries for global talent.”

Despite the realisation that certain skills in South Africa are scarce, both business and work permit capacity have not been used up in 2011. For the coming years however Pandor promised to increase the number of permits issued and the efficiency thereof.

“We’ve increased the opportunities for foreign investors and entrepreneurs — 1,346 visas were issued to entrepreneurs in 2011. We are on track to issue more than we did last year. We also plan to increase efficiency in issuing permits to investors in South Africa” Pandor said.

In an effort to attract critical skills only 20 000 permits were issued to qualified foreigners in 2011 by the South African Department of Home Affairs. This is less than half of the allowed number of skilled foreigners that according to immigration regulations are allowed entry into South Africa on a critical skills or quota work permit.

Re-visiting immigration laws during a time when more and more foreigners see the opportunities of an emerging market and are keen to be part of the growth of one of the most important countries in Africa, is clearly welcomed by industry leaders and the international talent community.