Immigration South Africa - Julian Pokroy Immigration Law Attorneys

BREAKING NEWS

NEW IMMIGRATION REGULATIONS GAZETTED BY MINISTER OF HOME AFFAIRS ON MONDAY 8TH MARCH 2004

In a surprise development on Monday 8th March 2004 the “final” immigration Regulations came into force when Judge Hennie Erasmus of the Cape High Court Bench ordered the Minister of Home Affairs to publish the Regulations in the Government Gazette on that day and further ordered that the Minister allow for comment and Cabinet proposals within thirty days.

The effect of this Court order is that Gazette number 26126 dated 8th March 2004 has been issued by the Government Printer.

An electronic version of these Regulations will be uploaded to this website as soon as it becomes available.

The most important changes in the Regulations relate to the following:

Retired persons/financial net worth category
The monetary requirement for the “retired persons” category has been reduced from ZAR 20 000.00 per month to ZAR 18 000.00 per month and the “financial net worth” investment requirement of ZAR 12 Million has been reduced to ZAR 10 Million providing an income of at least ZAR 13 000.00 per month, representing a reduction of ZAR 2 000.00 per month from ZAR 15 000.00.
A very positive development in both groupings in this category is that if an emigrant owns a property in which he/she will reside in South Africa then an amount of up to ZAR 10 000.00 may be deducted from the monthly income requirements referred to above.
Business Permit category
There has been a reduction of the capitalisation requirement in this category from ZAR 2.5 Million to ZAR 2 Million.
It is important to note that this capitalisation requirement may be reduced or waived by the Department of Home Affairs in consultation with the Department of Trade and Industry of South Africa.

A new innovation in the business permit category is that an additional category of alternate requirement (i.e. in addition to the capitalisation requirement) has been added and is quoted in full hereunder:

“That the business is, or can reasonably be expected to become, viable both in the short and long term when prudently considering its capital and other input requirements, including the applicants complete living costs”.
Quota Permit category
The controversial training fee (levy) is in terms of the new Regulations payable quarterly in arrears which is a substantial departure from the requirement that it be paid quarterly in advance.
Transitional Provisions
In terms of the transitional provisions set out in Regulation 48, no period of absence from South Africa as contemplated in Section 28(c) of the Immigration Act (which deals with potential withdrawal of permanent residence rights) may be computed as accruing from prior to April 7th 2003, being the date upon which the Immigration Act came into operation.

This has far reaching effects for persons who previously held permanent residence in South Africa but left the country for whatever reason and now wished to reassert or take up their rights of permanent residence in South Africa.