Immigration Laws: July, 2001 - Number #21

US Secretary of State Colin Powell toured four African nations in May 2001, calling special attention to HIV/AIDs. Powell said: "It is an economic crisis, a social crisis, a crisis for democracy, a threat to stability, a threat to the very future of Africa." In South Africa, 4.7 million of South Africa's 45 million residents are HIV-positive and 1,700 cases are added daily.

A report from the Department of Home Affairs found that 21,719 South Africans were detained, sometimes for up to a week, at the Lindela Detention Center between August 1996 and September 1999 because they could not produce identification that they were South Africans.

The country is now implementing a "foolproof and advanced" citizen verification system. Said one official: "We cannot afford to have South Africans illegally detained on the mere suspicion that they are illegal immigrants. A proper ID verification IT system is essential to sustain democratic and transparent procedures. "

South African farmers in the Northern Province are reportedly seeking a permanent court order to bar the Department of Home Affairs from deporting Zimbabwean farm workers. A previous ban on deportation of foreign farm workers expired on June 1, 2001. The South African farmers won a halt to deportations in March 2001 when the Home Affairs office was in the process of deporting 12,000 illegal migrants from the Northern Province.

The (South African) Refugees Act allows "refugees" to apply for permanent residence: (1) five years after getting refugee status; and (2) after an independent body of civil servants--the Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs--certifies that conditions in the refugee's country of origin will remain unchanged "indefinitely."

In December 2000, the Department of Home Affairs advised immigration officers to not admit foreigners seeking asylum in South Africa who had traveled through a safe third country en route to South Africa. After widespread criticism, the Department withdrew the December 2000 memo to immigration officers on May 31, 2001.

The Network Against Child Labor said it had heard accounts of illegal immigrant children found working on South African farms are being dumped at the border. NACL says that children should be referred to a children's court or helped to apply for refugee status.

Botswana. Illegal migrants from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola and Namibia have been streaming into Botswana. The district commissioner in Maun says that the illegal immigrants control the taxi industry and are taking away jobs from citizens. The police have been arresting and deporting illegal migrants.

West Africa. Many Africans seeking to enter Europe begin their journey: (1) on the beaches of el-Aioun, in the Moroccan-run Western Sahara, 60 miles from Fuerteventura in the Spanish Canary islands; or (2) in northern Morocco, aiming to cross the Straits of Gibraltar to Spain. Smuggling boats are often old fishing boats, and many migrants drown when the boats capsize. An estimated 1,000 African migrants died on Morocco-to-Spain routes in 2000, and 14,900 were caught by police. At least 15 migrants died when their boat capsized in late May 2001 as they were approaching Fuerteventura.

Child Trafficking. In a high-profile campaign by the government of the Ivory Coast, 97 victims of child trafficking were return to their homes in Burkina Faso. Some of those returned say they are neither children nor slaves. The returnees say that they were picked at random by police. One young man says he is 24 and not a slave, he has been working with papers in the Ivory Coast since 1999.

Since January, 350 alleged child slaves have been returned. The Ivorian government agrees that child slavery is a problem but denies it is widespread on the cocoa plantations. It claims that the children, traffickers and their sponsors are all foreigners and that Ivorian farmers are not to blame. The country has tightened its borders controls, especially with Mali and Burkina Faso, whose nationals account for two-thirds of the workers in cocoa and coffee plantations.