New visa ruling 'troubling' for expats

A troubling aspect of the latest immigration regulations raised to FTW was a specific ruling stating that companies that have foreign residents working in SA will need to have a local replacement policy in place. This was expressed as being of considerable concern to the SA subsidiaries of foreignowned companies that often have a policy of supplying the senior management from the parent companies. “A preference for your own to run your own,” was how one such foreign executive phrased it to FTW. But now the latest visa regulations require that when foreign executives are brought into SA the company should have a succession plan in place – or no work visa. This, according to Monya Flier, director of Intergate Immigration, relates to the “intra company transfer visa”. It was originally devised as a means of attracting what were then vital foreign skills, needed to overcome a critical shortage of local skills. Although it’s a debatable point, the government is convinced that this local skills shortage has changed, or can be changed by a company’s skills replacement procedure. “Perhaps as a result of the visa being overused and a continuous need to bring in foreign skills, government has decided to introduce stricter requirements for the visa,” was how Flier described it. She also suggested that the latest visa requirements hinted that government was dissatisfied that, during the lengthy lifespan of the intra company transfer visa, companies had failed to make a sufficient effort to grow local members of staff into those roles. So now, companies wanting to apply for the intra company transfer visa will have to produce a skills transfer plan. And, said Flier: “We will reach a stage where the department of home affairs is going to start calling out companies that fail to meet these requirements – creating potential problems for them and their future reliance on utilising the intra company transfer visa vehicle.” There are alternative visas – most relevant being the “general work visa” and the new “critical skills visa”. And, on the list of professions that qualify for the latter is that of a corporate general manager. This, according to Flier, would be a category through which international corporates – which genuinely require highly specific skill sets to take up certain positions – could import the foreign executives that they need. However, she said, “they (the applicant) would first need to prove they have the relevant education and experience to fulfil the role.” Meanwhile, for an applicant to qualify for a general work visa, a company would need to prove to the department of labour that they had exhausted the SA labour market – and that it was therefore necessary for them to draw skills from other markets.