Foreigners aren’t taking SA jobs. Bad policy is | Chris Patterson

South Africa is shedding jobs - 95,000 of them in the year to June 2026. Government’s answer? Blame the foreigners. The Employment Services Amendment Bill adds a whole chapter regulating the hiring of foreign nationals, complete with a quota system. Writing for The Daily Friend, Chris Patterson of the Institute of Race Relations argues this is scapegoating. The World Bank estimates each immigrant worker creates about two jobs for locals. Restrictive labour laws and decades of anti-growth policy are the real culprits. Nearly eight in ten South Africans would take any job at any wage rather than none. Instead of quotas, he says, fix the broken economy..By Chris Patterson* for The Daily Friend.Government is pointing the finger at foreigners instead of taking the decisions to boost job creation. It has introduced the Employment Services Amendment Bill into Parliament that seeks to regulate the employment of foreign nationals. Cabinet once again continues to put foreign nationals in the firing line, instead of focusing its nominal intention to grow the economy by attracting investment. It stated conspiratorially in a July statement: “[Cabinet]… noted the 3.1% representation by foreign nationals at all levels and is concerned with such representation at semi-skilled and unskilled level jobs which might be in contravention of the Employment Services Act which prescribes that employers must satisfy themselves that there are no other persons in the Republic with suitable skills to fill a vacancy before recruiting a foreign national.” It goes on, “Government will continue to use the findings to monitor transformation, promote equitable representation and guide corrective measures across the labour market”. At a “advocacy session” between the Department of Employment & Labour and Chinese business owners in the Western Cape that same month, Deputy Minister Jomo Sibiya said: “We need Chinese business owners to understand that South Africa is facing a high unemployment rate, and we are calling on employers to prioritise the employment of South Africans.” Nothing is said of the policy environment and the bureaucratic difficulty all businesses face when it comes to employing South Africans, not to mention foreign nationals. The “prioritisation” of South Africans won’t solve the jobs crisis. A 2018 report and analysis from the World Bank found that one immigrant worker generates approximately two jobs for locals, with leading reasons attributed to a more diverse set of skills and immigrants tending to be more entrepreneurial and open to taking risks. Let’s be clear: foreigners are not taking South African jobs. There aren’t enough jobs being created, and that is due to a highly restricted economy that comes because of decades of ANC anti-growth policy. The “corrective measures” the government must take include increasing investment by securing property rights, increasing gross fixed capital formation, maintaining infrastructure to create a foundation for economic growth which creates skills and boosts job creation. Where the costs and requirements of the Labour Relations Act, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and the National Minimum Wage Act discourage businesses from hiring formally, many will find ways to limit their exposure: by hiring fewer people, or by employing them outside the rules. The line government draws between compliant and non-compliant work is a luxury ordinary South Africans who need jobs simply can’t afford. 2020 polling from Afrobarometer showed that nearly 8 in 10 South Africans “believe it is better to have a job at any wage than to have no job at all”, noting that it “highlight[ed] the severity of South Africa’s unemployment crisis”. IRR Legal Executive Director Gabriel Crouse noted in a 2025 submission to the National Minimum Wage Commission that “[a]n estimated 5,377,049 people earn below the NMW. Almost all of those workers are non-compliant with the NMW law, except for some government workers, as the state is the sole employer permitted to pay people less than the NMW without requiring exemption.” The state of South Africa’s economy has created the perfect environment for a blame game, and foreigners are the convenient scapegoat for government failure. The Employment Services Act Amendment Bill inserts an entire chapter on the employment of foreign nationals. In Section 12B of the Bill, it goes so far as to create a quota system. This won’t address the unemployment problem, because with the lacklustre environment that is currently destroying jobs – 95,000 jobs were lost between June 2025 and June 2026 – the Bill takes the ANC’s love of demographic representivity to new job-destroying heights. The explanatory memorandum on the Bill says its purpose is to “promote employment, growth and productivity… and to facilitate access to work opportunities for work seekers, in particular vulnerable work seekers”. By kicking out foreign nationals out of existing jobs instead doing the hard but necessary work of fostering a pro-growth environment that will create more jobs? .Read more:.Creative tourism and South African millennials: Building skills, culture and jobs.Scapegoating foreigners – legal or illegal – doesn’t put food on the table, provide decent shelter or help parents achieve their goal to leave their children better off than they were. Boosting investment to build skills and create jobs does. The time for distraction is over. .*Chris Patterson is a researcher at the Institute of Race Relations. He enjoys a good political thriller, photography, and is starting to turn against AI, before it turns against him..This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. 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Foreigners aren’t taking SA jobs. Bad policy is | Chris Patterson

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