'Marriages of convenience' to be criminalised

Locals who enter into so-called marriages of convenience with foreigners to help them gain residence in South Africa could soon face stiff criminal penalties, Home Affairs warns.

Briefing the media at Parliament about changes the department wants made to the Immigration Act, director-general Mkuseli Apleni suggested that South Africans who knowingly entered into such marriages could, if caught and convicted, end up spending time in prison.

"We really want the act to have some penalties against citizens or resident who knowingly... enter into marriages of convenience... with foreign nationals.

"Once we find out that a marriage was a 'rent-a-marriage', then we need to deal with that particular individual," he told journalists.

Asked to spell out what the penalty might be, Apleni said "what we are aiming for... we'll really be looking for issues of criminality".

He equated marriages of convenience with identity theft, saying the penalty should be "at a level of more or less 15 years [in prison]".

Currently, the situation was that when "bogus" marriages were discovered, the foreigner involved was deported, but nothing happened to the South African involved.

The department now wanted locals who knowingly entered into such marriages to face criminal charges.

Other amendments the department is seeking to the Immigration Act include removing "immigration practitioners" from the legislation.

"We are not saying they must be abolished or not operate," Apleni said.

What the department wanted was that when permit application documents were submitted to it, this should be done by the individual applying, and not by an agent.

Immigration practitioners - the department said there were about 400 registered in the country - would still be free to process and help prepare an individual's documents, but would not be able to submit them on his or her behalf.

Apleni said it also wanted the introduction of a provision in the act allowing paternity or DNA tests to be conducted to "check the relationship of a child and a parent".

This was for cases where the adult claimed residence in the country on the basis he was the child's father.

Earlier on Tuesday, the department briefed members of Parliament's home affairs portfolio committee on the amendments it wanted made to the Immigration Act.