SA’s refugee and asylum-seeker system needs complete overhaul, says Home Affairs Minister Motsoaledi

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi on Tuesday said that the country’s refugee and the asylum-seeker system needed a complete overhaul.

Parliament heard that increasing numbers of migrants sought status in South Africa on economic, rather than persecutory grounds.

Motsoaledi said that the current system, which did not make provision for economic migrants, was giving rise to the backlog of over 130,000 appeals against the refusal of refugee permits.

The government could not indicate how many of the applications it was receiving were based on economic grounds.

Motsoaledi said the appeals process, and not first-time applicants, caused backlogs in the system.

“People who come here asking for asylum or refugee, they get processed and after processing whatever the outcome is, they start an appeal process, which I must state, in our country is over-elaborate,” he said.

The chairperson of the Refugee Appeal Board, Zilpha Raphesu, said because current legislation didn’t make provisions for economic migrants, the appeals were stacking up.

“As a result of that, everyone who’s a failed asylum seeker in South Africa goes through a process of appeal. So it is what we can call an unending bureaucratic ladder. Everyone who is an economic migrant, if you are rejected on the first leg, you proceed to the second leg, up until the last leg,” said Raphesu.

Half of the 130,000 appeals waiting to be processed have been lodged with the Pretoria office.

-EWN

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