visas

South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs presented a series of sweeping enhancements to its Trusted Employer Scheme (TES), a move set to dramatically modernise the country’s corporate immigration landscape.

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is working against the clock to have a dedicated online portal ready where any person who have automatically lost their South African citizenship after October 1995 when they acquired a second nationality, can lodge a case to confirm their SA citizenship reinstatement from anywhere in the world.

Role players in the immigration industry have welcomed the Department of Home Affairs’ (DHA) Smart ID rollout for naturalised citizens and permanent residents who, up to now, had to rely on the outdated green bar-coded ID books – leaving them vulnerable to the risk of fraud.

The successful deployment of drones to help secure South Africa’s borders and curb illegal crossings over the Easter holiday stands as further testament to the Department of Home Affairs’ (DHA) vision of becoming a digital-first institution for enhanced service delivery and tackling pressing challenges through innovation.

It is well within the powers of the South African Revenue Services (SARS) to limit a taxpayer’s right to travel outside the Republic. A section in the Tax Administration Act (TAA) has a provision whereby a senior SARS official can even require for “the taxpayer to surrender his or her passport to SARS”.