Department of Home Affairs Confirms Visa Backlog Has Increased to over 74 000, but Xpatweb says they see improvement

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) was represented by the Acting Chief Director: Permits, Mr. Phindiwe Mbhele. Many attendees commented that he presented exceptionally and he demonstrated a level of frankness on the challenges the DHA was experiencing, and also shared some of the plans of the DHA to eradicate the delays encountered by employers. This specifically refers to companies and international individuals who are applying for general work visas, intra-company transfer work visas, critical skills work visas, corporate visas, business visas and permanent residency applications.

Marisa Jacobs, the Managing Director of Xpatweb, dealt with the challenges, latest changes to immigration law and practices, as well as the current leading practices in managing work visas for international employees and business professionals. She noted that the only way to ensure any sort of promise can be made to a business for a timely issued visa/permit, is by following a legal escalation process with timeframes. The days are past where it can be expected of a normal human resource function to get correctly and timeously issued visas for a business. The current application process followed by Xpatweb allows for the smooth transition to a legal escalatory process in the event that the application is not finalized timeously. She also explained that the Xpatweb team is increasingly capacitated with attorneys and advocates specialising in immigration in order to deal with the challenges experienced by individuals and corporates alike when applying for a visa or permanent residence permit.

The following 2 (two) disparities arose from the presentations of Mr. Mbhele and Ms. Jacobs, which treated the attendees to an interesting debate facilitated by Jeremy Maggs –

• Mr. Mbhele noted that the DHA backlog on permits has increased to over 74,000 and that the DHA is keeping a very close track of the number of applications outstanding. He said that despite a backlog eradication project having been established by the DHA, the number of outstanding permits is increasing. This was contrasted by Ms. Jacobs who noted that practically, on the ground, Xpatweb has seen a marked improvement on visas being issued quicker and that many corporate employers and international employees are very pleased with the outcomes which they are receiving, especially in the past couple of months.
• Ms. Jacobs, however, noted that an area of concern is a much higher first-time rejection rate of work visa applications. These rejections are often completely unfounded in law and sometimes even have comical reasons as to why visas are being rejected. The application must then the appealed, which means further delays, as the DHA appeal department also has a backlog of appeals. Mr. Mbhele disagreed on this point and noted that the rejection rate has only slightly increased from previously below 25% to now 26%.

Everyone attending the Global Mobility Breakfast agreed that the demand for international employees is increasing in order to address the skills gap that exists to ensure South Africa remains globally competitive. The annual Xpatweb Critical Skills Survey is expected to be finalised in October 2023 , and any employer with foreign employees or the need for potential foreign employees should consider participating in the survey, which is used by government to inform their decision making.