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SA should 'manage migration'
15/04/2008 14:48 - (SA)
Pretoria - South Africa needs to move away from combating international migration towards managing it, deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba said on Tuesday.
"The biggest challenge involved the manner in which we manage international migration.
"The challenge we have is to establish multi-stakeholder forums that not only involve the department of Home Affairs but other government departments to work together to establish programmes which integrate immigrants in our country," he said.
Gigaba was speaking at a roundtable discussion with immigrants and refugees on human rights issues in Pretoria.
He said that the public also needed to be educated on issues regarding migration.
He said there was a tendency among South Africans to regard all immigrants as criminals who wanted to steal jobs.
"We must move away from the attempt to control and combat migration towards a new paradigm of managing international migration."
On the issue of xenophobia, Gigaba said communities, government and political organisations needed to work together to address the matter.
"You need political organisations and civil society organisations... all of them working together in communities because to issue a public statement condemning xenophobia is not enough," said Gigaba.
He said Home Affairs needed to make its system more efficient in order to address the matter.
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