{"id":194358,"date":"2017-08-24T09:30:45","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T07:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=194358"},"modified":"2017-08-24T09:30:45","modified_gmt":"2017-08-24T07:30:45","slug":"south-africas-massive-poverty-problem-can-be-helped-by-bringing-in-skilled-immigrants-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/194358\/south-africas-massive-poverty-problem-can-be-helped-by-bringing-in-skilled-immigrants-report\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa&#8217;s massive poverty problem can be helped by bringing in skilled immigrants: report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wealth\/193838\/what-youd-need-to-earn-to-pull-yourself-out-of-poverty-in-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">report <\/a><\/strong>published by Stats SA earlier this week found that\u00a030.4 million South Africans (55%) were living on less than R1,138 a month.<\/p>\n<p>Though South Africa saw a marked decrease in people living in poverty between 2006 and 2011 \u2013 the numbers jolted upward between that period and 2015.<\/p>\n<p>One of the best ways of addressing this issue would be if government actively encouraged high-skilled workers into the country, says\u00a0Jakkie Cilliers,\u00a0CEO of the Institute for Security Studies.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/citizen.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/1624559\/sa-needs-more-skilled-foreigners\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Citizen<\/a><\/strong>, Cilliers said that the department of home affairs currently actively discourages highly skilled professionals from coming to the country.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wealth\/193838\/what-youd-need-to-earn-to-pull-yourself-out-of-poverty-in-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">What you\u2019d need to earn to pull yourself out of poverty in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A report published by Stats SA earlier this week found that\u00a030.4 million South Africans (55%) were living on less than R1,138 a month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26,9583],"class_list":["post-194358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-irr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194358"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194376,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194358\/revisions\/194376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}