Foreign nationals planning to exit and re-enter the country’s borders during this festive season must ensure that they do so with their respective visa and/or waiver application receipts in order to avoid being denied entry back in the country.
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When Covid-19 pandemic hit South Africa towards the end of March 2020, the Department of Home Affairs was inundated with processing of visa and waiver applications. As a result of the backlog, foreign nationals in South Africa were unsure about their future, with many of whom involuntarily leaving the country to avoid being declared undesirable.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has since approved and authorized the implementation of the Circular that brought some interim measures to manage this backlog. These measures were implemented with effect from the 1st April 2022 and will remain in force until the 30th June 2022. They offer some temporary certainty to foreign nationals who have been legally admitted into the country and are currently waiting for the outcome of their visa or waiver applications as follows:
- All pending waiver applications are afforded unconditional extension until 30 June 2022 for these applications to be processed or for collection of the outcome of the applications and where required, to affected applicants to apply for appropriate visas. For applicants who choose to abandon their waiver applications and leave, they will be allowed to do so on or before 30 June 2022 without the risk of being declared undesirable.
- Similarly, all pending applications for visas enjoys the same extension to the current visa status until 30 June 2022. For foreign nationals who choose to abandon their applications for visa, they will allowed to leave the country by the same date without being declared undesirable. The current applicable conditions to these visas will remain in force throughout this period.
Additionally, the Circular permits applicants with pending long-term visa applications to travel during the this period as follows:
- Applicants who originate from countries that are exempt from port of entry visa requirements may travel by presenting their receipt from the Visa Facilitation Services (VFS) when they return to the port of entry for admission back into South Africa, and to collect their visa outcomes; and
- applicants who originate from countries that are visa restricted will need to obtain a port of entry visa and present their receipt from the Visa Facilitation Services in order to re-enter South Africa.
Employers and employees who may be affected will surely welcome these developments, although temporary.
Tshepiso Makgale
Labour & Employment