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Cape Town - Companies will have to do their own background checks on people they want to bring into the country, if the department of home affairs has its way with amendments to the Immigration Act.
Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Tuesday that the aim of the amendments was to "streamline and create checks and balances and centralise the process" for people wanting to enter SA.
"If a company wants to bring someone into the country, such as a CEO, then it makes no sense to have police clearances for every country that person has been in for the past 20 years," she said.
Dlamini-Zuma said the idea was to make companies "responsible" for ensuring that the correct information was presented on applications for job permits and the justification of their employment was properly presented.
Dlamini-Zuma said she was also in favour of a rule that if companies imported certain people into the country, they should also employ a number of local people as well.
She did not elaborate on the idea or where it came from.
The immigration amendment bill is being debated before parliament and has drawn criticism from a number of quarters. The aim is to finalise the law before the end of the second quarter.
