While Home Affairs Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi has outlined the government’s plan to attract more high-income earning foreigners to the country, a call has been made for more to be done.
Motsoaledi detailed the plans in a media briefing this week on the second amendment of the immigration regulations of 2014.
He said there has been a call for remote work visas and it was a new addition to the regulations.
“The remote work visa is for people who are employed in other countries but want to perform that work remotely while staying in South Africa,” he said using the examples of information technology, auditing and finance among other jobs that allow remote work.
“The catch here is that none of them must earn an equivalent of less than R1 million.
“The offer given to them is that they do not have to pay tax for employment of six months.”
The minister said the advantage for the country was that these are high earners will be spending money and hiring workers during their stay.
Economist Dawie Roodt said the R1m salary requirement was a bit high.
He said the average salary in the country is less than R200 000 per year while the cap for foreigners was five times that of an average South African worker.
Roodt said the future of the modern economy was that people could be in South Africa and work for an international company.
“The reality is that it doesn’t really matter where you are today, as long as you have a good internet connection, you can be anywhere in the world,” said Roodt.
Roodt said South Africa had to aim to make it easier for people with special skills to come and live in South Africa, spend their money and pay taxes.
“We need to make it attractive for people to come to South Africa. A million rand is not too high but I would reduce it even further to about R500 000,” he said.
In addition, Motsoaledi said there was some confusion between the critical skills list and the general work visa.
He said the department has not done away with the critical skills list and the only change was that the department would not need to wait four years for a new list to be gazetted.
“Any person who can show that a particular skill is critical and we are convinced, we will gazette it,” said Motsoaledi, adding that this will happen as and when a critical skill needed for the critical functioning of the country and the economy is identified.
With regard to the general work visa, the minister said the department had done away with the process of an employer having to go to the Department of Labour to prove that a South African cannot be found to do the work.
Motsoaledi said applicants will be issued the visa based on a points system that has not yet been gazetted.
He said some of the criteria being considered for the allocation of these points include age, qualifications, language skills, work experience, offer of employment and the ability to adapt within the republic.
The latter may be replaced with the income or salary the individual is being offered.
“Unfortunately, we cannot expand more on the point-based system because it still needs to be gazetted as we want to hear what the public will say about the scoring or points awarded.”
The Mercury