Real Politics: the poor are paying for immigration failures

As South Africa edges towards another flashpoint over immigration, one uncomfortable truth cannot be ignored. The loudest anger is not coming from the leafy suburbs of Cape Town, Durban and Sandton.

It is coming from townships and villages where unemployment is high, public services are collapsing, and every opportunity feels like a fight for survival.

For many poor South Africans, immigration is not an abstract political debate. It is something they experience every day.

Walk through many townships in Johannesburg, Durban or Cape Town, and the pattern is clear. Foreign nationals are heavily represented in spaza shops, informal trading, delivery services, e-hailing, hospitality and other parts of the informal economy.

Whether every perception is accurate is almost beside the point. These communities are responding to what they see in front of them, while the state appears unable or unwilling to enforce its own immigration laws.

The people least affected by this reality are often the quickest to dismiss it. Families in affluent suburbs are not competing for entry-level jobs, RDP houses, places in overcrowded public schools or space in government clinics. Their children attend private schools. They use private healthcare. Their security is paid for. Immigration is largely an intellectual debate.

For township residents, it is not a debate. It is a daily reality.

Every day they stand in longer queues at clinics. They compete for casual work that disappears within minutes. They watch small businesses struggle against fierce competition. They live in overcrowded settlements where housing shortages become worse every year. Whether immigration is the only cause is not the issue. It is one of the pressures they live with every day.

A government that doesn’t enforce

The frustration grows because many South Africans believe the rules are not being enforced.

South Africa allows many visitors to enter legally for limited periods. Some arrive on visitor permits, study visas or other temporary documents. Most comply with the law. But others overstay their permits or work without the work authorisation required by law. Weak enforcement, corruption and slow immigration systems mean many remain in the country for years. The result is that a legal arrival can become an illegal stay, while employers willing to ignore the law gain access to cheaper labour.

Universities face similar pressure. Every year, thousands of South African matriculants spend one or even two years trying to secure a place because there are simply not enough spaces.

Official figures from the department of higher education and training show that international students account for roughly 4% of public university enrolments – about 40,000 out of more than a million students – even though young South Africans shut out of the system may feel as if they are competing with far larger numbers. When people believe immigration rules are not being enforced properly, it fuels resentment and the perception that citizens are being pushed to the back of the queue.

Crime deepens those fears. Most foreign nationals are law-abiding people trying to earn a living. But criminal syndicates involved in illegal mining, drug trafficking, counterfeit goods, human trafficking and other organised crime have damaged public confidence. Communities living near illegal mining operations have seen armed gangs take control of entire areas while the state struggles to respond.

In high-profile illegal mining crackdowns in the North West, Limpopo and Northern Cape, SAPS has reported that most arrested zama zamas were undocumented foreign nationals from neighbouring countries, which has deepened public anger in nearby communities.

A government that doesn’t listen or act

South Africans are often told these concerns amount to xenophobia. That is too simple.

Violence against foreign nationals is wrong. Innocent people should never be attacked because of where they were born. But rejecting violence does not mean pretending there is no problem. A country has both the right and the responsibility to control its borders, enforce its immigration laws and decide who may live and work within them.

South Africa has failed on all three counts.

For years, the government has spoken about Pan-African solidarity while allowing corruption, weak border management and a broken asylum system to undermine public confidence. Instead of fixing those failures, politicians too often dismiss public anger as ignorance or prejudice.

That response has only widened the gap between the government and the communities carrying the greatest burden.

South Africa’s unemployment rate remains among the highest in the world. Millions of young people cannot find work. Municipalities cannot provide reliable services. Clinics and schools are already under severe pressure. In that environment, unmanaged immigration becomes more than an administrative problem. It becomes a source of social conflict.

The answer is not mob justice. It’s not intimidation or attacks on foreign nationals.

The answer is a government that finally enforces its own laws. That means secure borders, faster decisions on asylum applications, action against visa overstayers, deportation of people who remain in the country unlawfully, prosecution of employers who hire illegal workers and a determined fight against corruption inside the Department of Home Affairs.

Most of all, it means recognising that poor South Africans are not imagining the pressures they face.

South Africa is not alone in wrestling with these tensions. In recent years, cities from Lampedusa and Rome to Paris, Chemnitz and English coastal towns have seen protests – and in some cases violent clashes – over migration centres, small-boat crossings and new immigration laws, helping to fuel support for parties promising tougher border controls.

South Africa’s circumstances are more severe because unemployment and poverty are so much higher. But the underlying question is similar: how does a country manage immigration in a way that is lawful, orderly, and fair to both its own citizens and those who arrive from elsewhere?

The rich experience immigration as a political argument. The poor experience it as another queue, another missed job, another overcrowded classroom and another day wondering whether their own government still puts its citizens first.

Until the state regains control of its immigration system, that frustration will only deepen.

_{Top image: Getty}