Ireland becomes the latest country to impose a visa regime on South Africa citing an increase in South African asylum applications.
On Monday, 8 July 2024, the Irish Minister of Justice, Helen McEntee, announced that South African nationals will need a visa to enter Ireland effective Wednesday, 10 July 2024.
In the announcement published on the Irish Ministry of Justice website, McEntee explained that “nationals of Botswana and South Africa will be required to obtain a visa before travelling to Ireland. A transit visa will also be required, if intending to transit through Ireland en-route to another destination.”
McEntee added, “this is a carefully considered decision which will bring Ireland into closer alignment with the Schengen Area in respect of both of these countries, and into line with the UK in respect of South Africa.”
The move follows a marked increase in the number of South Africans applying for protection, asylum effectively, despite South Africa and Botswana being designated safe “for International Protection purposes.”
As hard a pill it is to swallow, the move by the Irish government is unsurprising and follows a similar move by the New Zealand government a few years ago, which cited a similar reason for the introduction of a visa regime on South Africans.
Indeed, many South Africans have in the past simply rocked up in so-called first world countries, abusing the visa-free travel privileges, which are often explicitly for tourism or short-term business travel, to pursue longer stays through seeking work and misusing asylum seeker protections.
The wanton corruption at South Africa’s Department Home Affairs has also not helped, many foreign nationals, mainly from the rest of Africa and South Asia, get South African citizenship and passports through corrupt and irregular means and summarily abuse whatever visa-free travel arrangements the country has.
Many countries who have over the past 30 years introduced visa regimes on South Africa, routinely sounded the alarm citing many of the problems above, including the risk of irregular migration and terrorism, but such calls have largely fallen on the deaf ears of the South African government.
A new Minister of Home Affairs, Leon Schreiber, was sworn in South Africa earlier this month, from the former opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, but it seems that he too will likely not prioritise the sanctity of the South African passport and its ability to be a key to travel the world, and instead stated that his primary focus would be on “issuing work visas” to foreign nationals seeking to work in South Africa.