Remarks by Hon NN Mapisa Nqakula, Minister of Home Affairs on the occasion of the presentation of the Immigration Amendment Bill to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs, National Assembly, 02 August 2004
Honourable Members,
I am sure you are aware that for some time now Cabinet has been seized with the matter of finalising the regulations for the Immigration Act.
At its meeting of the 4th of February we agreed that the Committee of Ministers established to deal with this matter should be convened to dispense with this task to allow for the harmonisation of our Immigration policy which has become long overdue.
In his State of the Nation Address, the President further directed that, due to the urgency of this work, we need to finalise our task in this regard within a period of three months. This deadline expires at the end of August 2004.
When we did meet, the Committee of Ministers considered some of the submissions from other Departments and Ministries as well as the recommendations made therein. It was clear to this
committee that in order to resolve some of the problems in the current proposed regulations, it will be necessary to make certain changes to the Act itself. This is because the regulations are in
themselves subordinate legislation based on the principal Act. Most of the problems with the regulations therefore, can be traced back to the provisions of the Act itself.
We have therefore agreed to look into those provisions of the current Act that need to be amended only for the purpose of finalising the current regulations in order to complete this process within the period given by the President.
There will be a need in the long term for Government to look at a more holistic review of our immigration policy and for a possible rewrite of the Act as proposed by the State Law Advisers.
The current process of drafting these short-term amendments has included the active participation of both the Chief State Law Advisers and his office and has looked into those proposals from the submissions by Ministers that can be taken on board in this current process.
We have tried as far as possible to consult broadly and most Ministers in the Committee as well as the relevant Departments have made valuable input. Where we have not taken the inputs on board, it would be because we believed they could be dealt with through the long-term process. In the long term, what is really important is to put in place a process that will ensure that South Africa has an immigration policy that effectively facilitates the immigration and emigration of people through our borders, encourages the attraction of foreign skills, boosts tourism and stimulate direct foreign investment amongst other objectives.
We are aware that the mere introduction of this Bill here in Parliament has generated a lot of interest from the relevant stakeholders and the public in general, and for this reason our team will be available here to listen and engage with different submissions received by the Committee. We hope that some of
these submissions will add a lot of value to both the current process as well as the long term changes we need to make to our immigration policy.
Please allow our team to make the presentation on the Bill. The Director General will introduce the team to Members available here today.