I recently participated in a webinar to present a report on South African migration. The subject interests me also because I have had the opportunity to meet many migrant workers from central Africa – after all, migrant labor has been a characteristic of the South African economy for a century and more.

The event was hijacked to an extent by representatives of Operation Dudula, an activist organization that prides itself on vigilante action to root out undocumented immigrants, deny them health and other services, to destroy their shops and other businesses. Officials are more or less in sympathy – a young Zimbabwean man of my acquaintance spent nine months in jail because police refused to believe that his papers were actually in order and that Immigration Authorities had not been willing to transfer his work permit to a new passport.

South Africa has close to a million foreigners, many refugees from failed economies or political repression to the north. If one has to believe activists, these people are the sole cause of crime, traffic accidents, and lack of services. The result is that many foreigners with valid papers are turning their backs on South Africa which may well cause instability in their home countries.

There is another personal angle – several of the younger members of my extended family have departed for greener pastures. Anecdotal information is that some two thousand young farmers from South Africa work, earn and pay taxes in Texas. Two nephews settled, with some success, in Australia. Children who contemplate moving to the other side of the globe. 

Imagine the feelings of someone seeking to build a career and a future for family and children but cannot do so because of political bias, economic degeneration, and downright discrimination. Imagine further that this person is offered an opportunity in a distant country where her skills will be welcome, where she would be able to have a career without having to play political games, and where children will have a good education. Where parents, cousins, and other support structures will be a distant memory.

Few people choose to migrate, to disrupt family, friendships, and established social and work networks. Yet Jean-Jacques Rousseau admitted, in his work on the Social Contract, that there comes a time when the individual has to consider that the contract is broken and that the option of migration becomes attractive.

The webinar referenced above related the statistics, the fact that immigrants create jobs, and contribute more to society than they take out. Migrants in South Africa, research shows, make up a smaller percentage of inmates in correctional facilities than their proportion to the population. Yet activists rely on anecdotes and emotions to pressure government to seek the expulsion of all immigrants, except for the few with rare skills.

A parent dealing with a seriously ill child in a distant land, a grandparent trying to understand why a grandchild is not visiting, these are realities every migrant will be familiar with.