The Constitutional Court put its legal foot down yesterday and, effectively, said “enough is enough” when it comes to abuse of the system designed to grant political asylum to genuine refugees.
It overruled a Supreme Court of Appeal judgment that asylum seekers whose applications were turned down were entitled to remain in the country while they made further applications.
At the risk of being accused of being somewhere on the xenophobia scale, we say the ruling is a welcome tightening-up of South Africa’s notoriously loose immigration rules.
What other country would assess an asylum application, find against the applicant and then allow that person to remain to attempt to do it again?
In the case before the court, the applicants were Burundians who have been in the country illegally since 2008 and 2009.
Their asylum applications were rejected in 2014 and they remained in South Africa – effectively illegally – and tried again in 2018.
The second time they attempted to use the fact that conditions in Burundi had deteriorated from 2015, posing a danger to them if they went home.
The Constitutional Court found that our Refugee Act does not make provision for asylum seekers to remain in the country once their applications have been rejected.
Judge Jody Kollapen warned, correctly we believe, that to allow people to remain after final rejection of an asylum application would lead to a “never-ending cycle” that delays deportations and places strain on administrative processes.
The reality in South Africa is that the vast number of illegal immigrants here are not fleeing persecution or are in any danger in their home countries.
They are simply here to make a better life for themselves.
And, while one cannot blame them for that, one must also understand that it breeds anger and resentment among South Africans competing for the same scarce resources.
