Fiscal Implications of Illegal Migration: Impact on South Africa as a 'Receiving' Country

Abstract

International migration is a worldwide phenomenon that happens due to various reasons such as economic stability, war, political situations and so forth. South Africa's migration started around the 1860's with the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand and diamonds in the Orange Free State. The change of political leadership from apartheid system to the new democracy drew many migrants all over the world to South Africa. Whilst volumes in migration are said to have increased since 1990, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia are said to be destinations of choice in the SADC region for illegal migrants. Illegal migration is said to be difficult to measure clandestine migration due to its complexity such as political, socioeconomic, wars and other factors. South Africa's migration control and deportation rate is said to have increased post 1990 having a serious dent on the fiscus. There is however, no publicly available financial information on South Africa's expenditure on immigration enforcement. This paper is a desk top analysis of the fiscal implications of illegal immigrants on South Africa as a 'receiving' country. This paper focuses on areas where there are financial implications caused by illegal migration. The results of this desktop research indicate that access to records on how much South Africa spend on the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants is not easily available as such information on the budget spent by the country is collected from limited resources. The limited studies on the fiscal implications on 'receiving' countries such as South Africa indicate that it is a sizable amount