Plan better for foreign migrants – Stats SA’s chief director of demography

With South Africa’s foreign migrant population rising by 200,000 annually, government should introduce an evidence-based intervention informed by growth trends, according to a demography expert.

Statistics South Africa’s chief director of demography Diego Iturralde said: “From a human rights point of view, I am not in favour of influx control to regulate the movement of locals or foreigners.

“Better planning based on studies and trends is the best approach.”

He could not give a figure of how many undocumented foreigners there were in the country because the census did not record their legal status.

Proponent and prominent businessman Molefi Lebona blamed relaxed department of home affairs immigration policies and corruption at border posts for the swelling numbers of undocumented foreigners.

Lebona, who left apartheid South Africa in 1986 at the age of 14 to live in exile in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania before returning in 1991, said influx control, ridding border posts of corrupt customs officials and stringent immigration policies and laws were the way to curb the growing numbers of illegal migrants.

While he condemned the recent xenophobic violence, Lebona said the country’s budget and resources were being drained by the influx of foreigners to South Africa.

“But intelligence should have been gathered and acted on before the violence broke out,” he said.

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