Children born in SA to undocumented migrants are entitled to home affairs-issued birth certificates, in what is a major victory for migrants and the Legal Resources Centre. The centre announced on Thursday that, after much "back and forth" with the Department of Home Affairs, the department’s "director of births, marriages, deaths and records management confirmed that [it was] ... best to [issue] the DHA-19 birth certificate ..." However, the birth certificate does not entitle its recipients to citizenship in SA. The centre intervened after being approached by a Congolese asylum seeker whose newborn son was refused a birth certificate by home affairs officials at the hospital where the baby was born. "Our client tried on more than one occasion to register the birth of his son. The refusal to issue the birth certificate was solely based on the fact that the mother was undocumented at the time of the birth, as her asylum application had been rejected," said the centre in a statement o...
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