ECONOMIC GROWTH
CLAIRE BISSEKER: SA's immigration policy strangles the flow of skills
Perhaps one shouldn’t read too much into the fact that the CEO of RwandAir was unable to get a visa to visit SA last month to attend the launch of the airline’s new flight route from Kigali to Cape Town. Mistakes happen. But what about the fact that a group of about 30 travel agents from Ethiopia cancelled their mission to Cape Town in April because of difficulties obtaining visas, or the fact that Wesgro CEO Tim Harris says he spends 80% of his time wrangling with the Department of Home Affairs to expedite investors’ access to the Western Cape? "I think our immigration policy doesn’t make it easy enough to bring in the skills our companies need to grow," says Harris. "If there is an ideological issue it’s a failure to recognise that skilled immigrants are significant net job creators." Economists like to say: show me a country that is battling to export and I will show you a country with a confused immigration policy. SA’s exports are grossly underperforming. In the 2016 calendar y...
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