I came across this article today and this abut sums up the rigged visa application process. The only difference is a friend of mine is a travel agent so she helped out for free. I did not think about this being an additional fee and I suppose it would be. In the past travel agents were just grateful for your business and would do this type of thing for no additional charges and shows how times and businesses in general have changed.
I am in the process of making sure my entre family has a British passport so we can bypass all this red tape and nonsense. I do understand it has to be done for certain countries needing to apply otherwise it would be like what we are witnessing now except far worse. The citizens of those countries have to come first by protecting their livelihoods and not just opening the borders for anyone with or with no skills to walk right through. That would be unsustainable and is one of the main causes why we are seeing a country like South Africa have the highest unemployment rate in the world.
Xenophobia is really a big thing here with the local citizens hating foreigners especially those from other parts of Africa. If you look at it from a locals perspective they have every right to be angry due to their being no jobs.
The previous government was hiding foreign nationals by duplicating Identity Documents and this has now been uncovered by the new minister who took over the Department of Home Affairs. This was all through corruption and the ID books or cards that have been duplicated are now being cancelled. This is identity theft having two people on the same identity document just with different photographs. People that have died are still alive apparently because the same identity number is still active. I know a Zimbabwean who has a SA Identity Document ad he openly admits there is another person using the exact same number and his is fake, but legitimate. He was given this for voting purposes as long as he voted with the ANC Party.
This is why the country is in such a mess because no one can tell you how many people reside in the country anymore due to fake and fraudulent documents. It is believed SA has somewhere between 2 and 4 million Zimbabweans residing in the country and to think many of those are working. That number could be far higher and most likely is due to the illegal crossings with no real border in place. If you take those 4 million jobs and hand them back to the locals suddenly the unemployment number shrinks rather considerably. The 32% unemployment figure people talk about is closer to 50% and this is directly down to illegals taking the jobs. If we throw in the number of Malawians, Mozambicans and Zambians into the mix we are talking about many millions of jobs and could be as much as 10-15% of the entire work force.
I know may are on the side of having open borders and no visas, but honestly this does not work. I do believe in allowing those in who have specialist skills, but not the what I would call general riff raff who are going to be a drain on the economy. Thankfully this is being rectified here with the announcement this week that companies will be facing severe fines for hiring foreigners over locals.