Permanent Residence in South Africa can open many doors for the applicant, allowing freedom in a bustling and growing economy, filled with beautiful scenery and lovely people. This video and article explains why you should consider permanent residency, the various pathways for applying, how you could lose permanent residency, and answers questions regarding dependants, costs, and processing times.
Why Do You Want to Obtain Permanent Residence?
The main reason is to have a secure legal right to reside permanently in South Africa and become independent from any law changes. Once you obtain permanent residence, you are equally treated as any South African when it comes to the labour market among other things, you can also apply for an ID book, which has a lot of practical advantages in South Africa, since we have a centralised ID number used for numerous things.
So, there are practical reasons: Security, and in particular, you become quite versatile.
How Can You Lose Permanent Residence in South Africa?
You can lose permanent residency if you leave South Africa for more than three years without any visit to South Africa. The Department of Home Affairs can say you gave up your permanent home, and therefore, you lose your permanent residence.
In practise this doesn’t happen a lot. And one visit every three years as a tourist would help. When you apply for permanent residence, however, it’s very important that you really want to reside permanently in South Africa and it’s not just an option to obtain. Some missions, in particular the one in Berlin is really keen on this and want to understand that you are capable of moving permanently South Africa, so then I think is an important point to remember.
But mostly, you lose it is if you are absent for more than three years without any visit. There’s a couple of other things: if you become a heavy criminal with a clear list of serious crimes, you also lose your permanent residence and, of course, if you buy it or obtain it through corruption and any other illegal means and they find this out later. Believe me, it does happen. A few new ministers sometimes do audits, and they discover a lot of illegal permanent residency is obtained. And then obviously you lose it.
Dependants And Family Members
Even if the main applicant is not maybe interested in permanent and sometimes for the family for the children and might be of high interest to become a permanent residence holder, because firstly, in most schools, you’ll pay local fees and if they want to have a student job as a bartender for example, they equal to South Africans and don’t need a work visa. Sometimes while the main applicant might not need the permanent residence, it does make sense for the immediate family members to receive it.
How Can You Obtain Permanent Residence?
South Africa is a long list of how to obtain permanent residence. In our immigration act in our act, we have two sections: number 25 and number 26 of our Immigration Act which lists how you can obtain permanent residence. In this video and article, we will not go into full detail and explain everything and will have subsequent videos for that. We will, however, briefly list all the reasons and talk about them so that you have a good overview and find out if you fit in or not and qualify or not.
Permanent Residence as a Critical Skills Visa Holder
Based on work, there are two options to qualify for permanent residence. If you are a Critical Skills Visa holder, you might qualify for permanent residence if you have a permanent employment contract and have more than five years of POS qualification. Critical Skills Visa holder qualify for permanent residence in most cases.
When you’re a holder of a General Work Visa for more than five years and you have a permanent employment contract, you can also apply for permanent residence. You do not get permanent residence automatically by just being in South Africa for five years. This is something a lot of clients in practice ask. “I’ve been in South Africa for five years on a Study Visa so can I not apply for permanent residence?” No, you cannot, that path doesn’t exist.
The confusion regarding five years is related to being on a Work Visa. The Immigration Act is very clear. It says if you are the holder of any work visa for more than five years and hold permanent employment, you qualify for permanent residence.
“Work Visa” also includes the Intra-Company Transfer Work Visa. That’s interesting since in the last 6-8 years, Home Affairs has flat out refused to permit any former ICT holders to apply for permanent residence based on the five years. They just say ICT is a temporary assignment to South Africa, and therefore, it does not count into the five years. I would suggest that this could be nicely tested in court because the formulation the act is very clear: It says any work visa and that includes the Intra-Company Transfer Work Visa in the legislation. There is no exception to this. If anybody feels like you want to test this, you stand very good chances in court, but I warn you if you just apply for it, it will be rejected as standard administrative practice to not count the ICT.
Holders of a Business Visa
You can also qualify for permanent residence if you’re a holder of a business visa. If you set up a business you founded and invested from overseas a minimum amount, and your hold a business visa, you also qualify for permanent residence There is no minimum time, the important part is that your business is up and running and compliant. Normally, the Department of Trade and Industry would visit you and then recommend your business for permanent residence, and then you can apply for it.
The good news is that for two categories of permanent residence applications, the processing times is faster than usual, and that’s critical skills, and business. We see a pattern that the Department of Home Affairs normally issues permanent residence between 8 and 10 months in these categories. In the other categories, however, the processing time is horrendous. We’re talking 3 to 4 years, which is terrible.
Permanent Residence through Marriage
You qualify if you’re married to a South African, or the life partner of a South African citizen or permanent residence holder (you do not have to be married, South Africa protects the life partnership). However, there was, years ago, a legislative change that added a requirement that you must be married for more than five years to qualify for permanent residence. You can come and join your spouse on a temporary residence even when you’ve only been married for one day, or two years in life partnership, but if you want to apply for permanent residence, you must be married for more than 5 years or in a life partnership for more than 5 years.
Child Dependants
if you’re a child of a citizen, you also qualify for permanent residence. if your child is the citizen you can apply for yourself if you’re the foreigner for permanent residence based on your South African child. That’s very important and is definitely possible.
Permanent Residence by Financial Independence
Financial independence has an asset requirement. Your net assets worldwide, not in South Africa, they, don’t have to be in South Africa, must exceed 12 million Rand. Some mission, like in Berlin, really want to see your whole assets, and they want to know what you have, and where you have loans, et cetera. Some other missions are a bit more lenient.
The application looks purely at net assets, it does not look at monthly income.
For more information, we have another article and video covering Permanent Residence by Financial Independence.
Permanent Residence Retirement Options
The retirement option looks at monthly income and needs to be a monthly income out of assets or retirement annuity or pension, etc in excess of 37,000 Rand per month. A lot of government officials think that’s very little. My experience is the 37,000 Rand per month is for pension income a good level, depending on the exchange rates to the Euros, you might be able to move it to 40, but you can’t move it to 60 or 70. You’re going to exclude many applicants and many of our clients would not qualify for retired.
If there’s any legislative changes planned, Department of Home Affairs, don’t increase it now! You will exclude the vast majority of applicants.
So, retirement looks at monthly minimum income, financial independence looks at worldwide assets.
Refugees and Permanent Residence
Finally, if you are an acknowledged refugee, not an asylum seeker, you also qualify for permanent residence.
Conclusion
IBN Immigration Solutions has assisted numerous clients in successfully receiving their Permanent Residence in South Africa and would love to assist you too! We are familiar with all the requirements for applications, possible red-flags, and hold-ups with the government’s immigration department, meaning that you’ll be in safe hands.
Make your immigration journey an easy one; reach out to us today!
Written by Andreas Krensel
Edited by Simon Carletti
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