A year ago I reflected in these pages on DA minister Leon Schreiber’s first 12 months at the helm of home affairs. Two years on, the pace of reform remains remarkable.
The introduction of the trusted employer scheme, the electronic travel authorisation, the remote work visa, points-based work visa reforms and an accelerated drive towards digitisation have demonstrated a willingness to modernise a department long associated with administrative inertia.
Yet implementation has also exposed a number of blind spots. Some reflect conscious policy choices. Others are unintended consequences that have become apparent only through implementation. These expose opportunities for the next phase of South Africa’s immigration reform.
The introduction of the remote work visa acknowledged an important reality: work is no longer confined to a traditional office or geographical location. When the visa was introduced in October 2024 I argued in these pages that limiting eligibility to foreign employment and foreign remuneration excluded a big segment of internationally mobile professionals.
Two years of implementation have now manifested the practical consequences of that policy choice. The global digital economy comprises self-employed professionals, entrepreneurs, consultants, freelancers, software developers, digital educators and content creators whose businesses generate foreign-source income without the existence of a traditional employer-employee relationship. South Africa recognised remote work, but it has yet to fully recognise remote economic activity.
The legislative trajectory initially appeared to point in that direction. The second amendment to the immigration regulations, published in May 2024 before Schreiber assumed office, referred not only to people working remotely for a foreign employer but also to those who “derive foreign source income on a remote basis”.
That language more closely reflected the contemporary digital economy. Yet by the time the operational framework was finalised under the third amendment regulations in October 2024 the policy had crystallised around strictly remote employment. The broader concept of remote economic activity no longer found meaningful expression in the practical eligibility requirements.
That distinction increasingly determines which jurisdictions, particularly those that rely heavily on the tourism sector, compete successfully for globally mobile entrepreneurship, innovation and foreign-earned income. Thailand’s Destination Thailand visa, and the United Arab Emirates’ remote work and residence programmes, have adopted broader approaches that recognise the economic value of attracting internationally mobile individuals irrespective of whether they derive their foreign income through employment or self-employment.
The consequence is that in its present form South Africa’s remote work visa does not fully reflect the contemporary digital economy it was intended to attract and therefore risks foregoing the wider economic benefits generated by foreign-earned income that is ultimately spent, invested and circulated in the local economy.
The narrow construction of the remote work visa has fuelled a further unintended consequence. Economically active foreign nationals who earn income abroad but fall outside a conventional employment relationship continue to seek residence through visa categories designed for different purposes.
The retired person visa is the clearest example. Eligibility does not require an applicant to have reached retirement age, nor does the Immigration Act define retirement by reference to the cessation of all economic activity. In practice, the visa has therefore long accommodated people who are financially independent but remain professionally active abroad.
The revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection has questioned whether the retired person visa is being abused beyond its intended purpose, but the concern should rather be that the immigration framework continues to lack a category capable of accommodating financially self-sufficient people who derive foreign-source income outside a conventional employment relationship.
The retired person visa has simply occupied that gap over the years. Restricting it without first addressing that legislative gap would not modernise the immigration framework. A more coherent approach should place equal value on economic activities that may produce the same domestic benefit: financially independent residents spending foreign-generated income in the South African economy.
Modern immigration systems increasingly distinguish between deliberate abuse and administrative noncompliance. However, South Africa’s framework continues to rely heavily on automatic declarations of undesirability where foreign nationals overstay their visas, even if the overstay arises from misunderstanding, administrative delays or other mitigating circumstances.
South Africa did not always adopt this approach. Before the 2014 amendments to the Immigration Act visa overstays were generally addressed through administrative fines. The amendments replaced that system with automatic declarations of undesirability and accompanying re-entry bans. While intended to strengthen immigration compliance, the reform has also generated substantial volumes of review and upliftment applications, placing further pressure on an already undercapacitated adjudication system that frequently struggles to determine even urgent, well-founded cases in reasonable timeframes.
If administrative fines were reintroduced as the default consequence for ordinary overstays, applications for review or upliftment could be reserved for cases in which a lawful basis exists to challenge the finding of noncompliance or to seek waiver of the prescribed fine.
The recent immigration enforcement campaign, which has led to many deportations and voluntary repatriations, has coincided with an unprecedented increase in declarations of undesirability, the volume and scale of which raises serious concerns about whether decisions can reasonably be adjudicated on a proper case-by-case basis.
The objective of maintaining immigration compliance is entirely legitimate. The question is whether every overstay warrants exclusion from the country for one or five years, or whether a more proportionate enforcement model could achieve the same policy objective while simultaneously alleviating pressure on an already constrained public budget.
Saudi Arabia’s approach of imposing escalating administrative penalties for visa overstays demonstrates that robust immigration enforcement need not rely exclusively on automatic re-entry bans. Financial penalties can operate as an effective deterrent while preserving exclusion measures for more serious or repeated violations.
South Africa has already demonstrated a willingness to modernise immigration policy. A similarly pragmatic review of the overstay regime would complement those reforms by introducing greater proportionality into immigration enforcement. The true measure of reform is not whether it is free from blind spots, but whether there is a willingness to recognise and address them. Good leadership is defined not only by the ability to introduce bold change but also by the confidence to refine it as experience exposes shortfalls.
Schreiber has shown that home affairs can be modernised. The next step is to build on that momentum by broadening the vision: recognising the realities of the digital economy, closing legislative gaps that have emerged through implementation and ensuring that immigration enforcement remains proportionate, practical and economically sensible.
Reform is a process, not a destination. It requires the confidence to acknowledge blind spots as readily as successes. If the first two years have demonstrated what is possible, addressing these remaining blind spots can help ensure South Africa’s immigration system is not only more efficient but more competitive, more responsive and better equipped for the realities of a rapidly changing world.
• Pizzocri is CEO of immigration and citizenship law firm Eisenberg & Associates Inc.
Business Day
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