Much interest has been generated by the recent decision of the Canadian Government to grant refugee status to a South African citizen.
Notwithstanding the fact that the South African Government has taken great umbrage at the decision, the decision initially by the Canadian Government is extremely important in the context of the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees.
In a nutshell, to be refugee you must be able to demonstrate “a well founded fear of persecution if you are forced to return from whence you came” for reasons of your ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and so on. What is interesting is the Canadian Government believed that the state of South African is not able to protect its citizens and, in particular, its white ones. A big call indeed and clearly one that is more than a little delicate racially. My understanding of the decision was that the Canadian Government was quite satisfied that as a consequence of seven acts of crime against the individual and affirmative action employment policies which exclude certain sectors of South African society (principally whites but not limited to them), this amounts to “persecution” in terms of the Convention.
It is my personal view that there is a big difference between being discriminated against in terms of employment opportunities and be the target of crime and being persecuted. Equally, if being a victim of crime in South Africa makes someone eligible for refugee status than this has enormous implications for Governments around the world and will have sent shivers up the spine of many a politician, including our own. The Canadian Government appears to have redefined ‘persecution’.
In the New Zealand context, given we are one of the few developed countries that allow visa‑free entry to South African citizens, the New Zealand Government must surely be studying the implications of that decision. Any South African who travels to New Zealand who has a similar background, i.e. victim of crime and has lost out on employment opportunities through affirmative action policies (which basically means a significant number of whites and especially younger ones) could put up their hands at the airport in New Zealand and seek asylum. Furthermore, anyone who might have travelled visa-free on a South African passport who perhaps finds a job, but is declined a Work Permit, could then apply for refugee status. If the Canadians have rewritten the definition this could cause a flood of applications to the Refugee Status Authority here in New Zealand.
That in turn, I believe, would very quickly justify shutting down the visa waiver programme for South African citizens and make it far more difficult for South Africans to travel here on holiday, on business or to find work. That would serve nobody’s interests, but it simply must be under consideration by the New Zealand Government.
For 20 years I have been giving seminars in South Africa and when speaking on Immigration policy tended to suggest that getting refugee status under the UN Convention would be extremely difficult for a South African, but at the back of my mind I always wondered, with affirmative action and crime, if indeed somebody would test that definition somewhere on the planet in a country that is a signatory to that Convention. Now that it has happened, not only will my presentations change, but I will be keeping a very close eye on this.
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