Concern over new visa to attract skilled workers in South Africa
Following a slew of announcements seeking to promote skilled workers to make their way to South Africa, including a remote working visa, experts have raised concern over whether they are realistic.
During President Cyril Ramaphosa’s latest State of the Nation Address (SONA), he emphasised the need for more skilled workers in the country. He echoed promises from SONA 2022, saying that the country was working on measures to introduce a new remote working visa to allow critical skills to enter the country and work here on a temporary basis.
Marisa Jacobs, the managing director at Xpatweb, said that such a visa would be a win for organisations that are desperate to acquire scarce skills. She warned, however, that implementation of the key proposals is crucial for actual change to occur as fast as needed.
“Whatever the improvements we can hope for, employers needed them yesterday,” she said.
According to Xpatweb, its latest annual critical skills survey found that over 80% of businesses struggle to recruit talent locally – and must rely somewhat on overseas.
Notably, despite the talk of a remote working visa, no further information or timeline has been provided. There has also been zero progress made by the Department of Home Affairs on implementing the visas.
The new visa would amend key regulations dealing with immigration to allow for visa extensions for specific activities beyond 90 days.
“Apart from attracting the foreign income of digital nomads, the visa could serve as an incentive to foreign candidates whose spouse wishes to continue working remotely for their overseas employer,” Xpatweb said.
On top of the new remote worker visa, Ramaphosa included the following proposals:
More flexible points-based system to attract skilled immigrants
A points-based system, used by places like Canada, assigns points to selected criteria, such as education level, years of experience, wealth, and more.
“If the accumulated points pass a minimum threshold, a candidate qualifies to enter the country,” said Jacobs.
Making this more flexible will allow for faster entry of suitably qualified candidates.
A trusted employer scheme to make the visa process easier for large investors
The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) already launched its Corporate Accounts Unit in 2014, dedicated to servicing corporates and multinationals based in South Africa.
“This certainly seems like an extension of that function to make it easier for these companies who need to bring in skills regularly and on an ongoing basis, so it is an extremely good development,” said Jacobs.
Bleaker outlook
According to Jacobs, the realities of the proposals are far bleaker than they set out to be.
For example, she said that there was a major backlog due to the failure of the Central Adjudication system in 2022 – leaving a large number of ex-pats without visas.
In addition, Jacobs said a tightening of the immigration regime over the last 12 months had made it much harder to secure a work visa and that it takes much longer now for applications to be processed.
Jacobs said rejection rates have also reached the highest rate in the last 15 years – often for arbitrary reasons.
It is for these reasons, among others, that implementation is crucial to the success of new proposals seeking to attract skilled workers, said the managing director.
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