South Africa’s massive poverty problem can be helped by bringing in skilled immigrants: report
A report published by Stats SA earlier this week found that 30.4 million South Africans (55%) were living on less than R1,138 a month.
Though South Africa saw a marked decrease in people living in poverty between 2006 and 2011 – the numbers jolted upward between that period and 2015.
One of the best ways of addressing this issue would be if government actively encouraged high-skilled workers into the country, says Jakkie Cilliers, CEO of the Institute for Security Studies.
Speaking to The Citizen, Cilliers said that the department of home affairs currently actively discourages highly skilled professionals from coming to the country.
“The problem is that the department of home affairs has an active anti-immigration policy across the board that deters highly skilled professionals and entrepreneurs,” he said.
“We need to do everything we can to bring those people into the country to invest, create jobs and share skills. There still seems to be a large amount of bureaucracy which persists in demotivating people who can bring and transfer skills and jobs into SA.”
According to the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), while one in every two people in South Africa is living in poverty, the number of unskilled immigrants accounts for only a very small proportion of the poor.
Thuthukani Ndebele, head of research at the IRR said that foreigners may be doing better than locals because unemployment in immigrant communities tends to be lower.
Read: What you’d need to earn to pull yourself out of poverty in South Africa
Loading ...