Not for the first time one wonders whether the government’s left hand knows what the right hand is doing.
Operation Vulindlela has been working with the department of home affairs for some time to implement visa reforms that will attract the foreign skills SA urgently needs to plug the skills gaps weighing on economic growth, as well as encourage innovation and competitiveness.
Over the past year it has finally put in place a series of reforms, including a new points-based skills visa, a new trusted-employer scheme and a new remote work visa for digital nomads.
Instead of second-guessing the market by trying to prescribe what skills the economy needs — as the government has been wont to do in the past — the Vulindlela visa reforms allow for a more agile and market-friendly approach.
The points-based system enables foreigners with a certain level of tertiary qualifications and earnings to obtain visas. It enables large employers to fast-track the transfer into SA of the expertise and experience they need.
SA has long had the problem that its porous borders allowed for much unskilled labour to flow in, while the government made it hugely cumbersome — if not impossible — for skilled labour to gain entry.
The Vulindlela reforms, helped along by home affairs minister Leon Schreiber, seemed finally to be addressing the foreign skills issue in a way that would align SA with international best practice.
Then along comes the department of employment & labour with an approach that seems to send the opposite signals. The department’s new national labour migration policy and its Employment Services Bill claim to be designed to attract the skills SA needs. But they hinge on a series of requirements that are at best cumbersome and at worst straight-out xenophobic. That will not surprise critics, who have long believed the department to be averse to foreigners no matter how skilled or special.
True, the labour migration white paper does offer some crucial proposals that would unblock some of the constraints to importing and retaining foreign executives and experts. These include measures to enable their spouses and dependants to obtain visas more easily, as well as to enable them and their families to gain permanent residence more swiftly.
The paper also proposes more active recruitment measures abroad and it proposes more active efforts on SA’s part to target its diaspora and encourage skilled émigrés to return.
All of that is timely and good. But alas, it is overshadowed by the huge emphasis on quotas and restrictions. This explicitly second guesses the market, setting sectoral quotas for foreigners and prescribing where they can and can’t be employed. Local workers are to be prioritised. Clear guidelines are set for the hiring of foreign workers. Quotas are to be introduced for the employment of foreign workers in agriculture, hospitality, tourism and construction. The measures are anything but market-friendly. They are likely to prompt court challenges.
Over and above that are moves to restrict foreign business visas in particular sectors and limitations on foreign-owned small businesses. And then there is the public sector, where public service & administration minister Mzamo Buthelezi plans to issue a directive on the utilisation of foreign nationals that limits their employment contracts and attempts to ensure “critical skills are systematically transferred to suitable qualified SA citizens”.
As it is, foreign nationals represent just 0.5% of public servants in national and provincial government — 6,333 people in total. Many of them are in education and health, where importing skills is more an opportunity than a threat.
There’s a tendency to xenophobia, particularly towards people from other African countries, among some opposition parties as well as in the government itself. Even the limited measures to attract foreigners the migration policy proposes are controversial.
But SA cannot have it both ways. All the evidence is that, far from destroying jobs, skilled immigration helps create them. The government needs to make up its mind whether it wants to play to populism and xenophobia or make a real attempt to generate growth and jobs.
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