New immigration regulations no good

The recently gazetted immigration regulations will assist in sliding the country back economically. Unbelievably, these regulations have been published without the much-awaited critical skills list. The critical skills list will sort out the professions and trades that qualify for work permits.

Another illogical regulation is that in order to qualify for a spousal or life partner permits, applicants must be able to prove a relationship of at least two years. How this is to be done is unclear. The legal fraternity are already claiming that this may well be unconstitutional. I tend to agree with them.

Already I am aware of a case where a British citizen married to a South African has been prevented from returning to South Africa after a brief visit to the UK. Despite the applicant having timeously and correctly applied for her visa, she is being penalised, through no fault of her own. Home Affairs has simply been too slow and inefficient to process this and thousands of other applications.

The Minister needs to get back to the drawing board to fix this from scratch before more damage is done.

Manny de Freitas MP

Shadow Minister of Home Affairs

Democratic Alliance