ActionSA, on Tuesday, stressed that wanting the issue of illegal immigration tackled was not xenophobia.

During Monday’s Home Affairs Budget Vote debate ActionSA said urgent intervention was needed to deal with the “crisis”.

ActionSA parliamentary caucus chief whip Lerato Ngobeni said her party rejected “cheap labelling” of its unambiguous declaration of the need for intervention as xenophobia.

The party said it wanted to strengthen the legal mechanisms for entry into South Africa for those “genuinely wishing to contribute to the country’s economy”.

The party claimed that the current immigration regime made it difficult for foreign nationals to enter South Africa legally but made it easy for people to do so illegally.

“Consequently, South Africa is now embattled by an uncontrolled influx of illegal migrants, emboldened international drug syndicates, human traffickers, organised cross-border criminals, and the unfortunate domination of critical local sectors, such as spaza shops, by foreign nationals,” stated Ngobeni.

She said her party had repeatedly expressed concern that the impact of this was hardest felt by the poor, who, among other issues, not only must confront the “reality of competing in an already constrained labour market with cheap and exploitable” foreign labour, but also live in “communities turned into drug dens and war zones by often untraceable violent criminal gangs”.

She said government’s mismanagement and policy failure had resulted in the country’s porous borders, lax immigration controls, and a corrupt Department of Home Affairs and law enforcement agencies that were “ill-capacitated” to enforce immigration laws.

“Therefore, it is unthinkable that opposition to this illegality is somehow more of an affront than the fact that our sovereignty and laws are being undermined,” she added.

Ngobeni said it was misguided and inflammatory to associate genuine advocacy for urgent intervention on this crisis with xenophobia, which she said had come to feature as a recurring tool “employed to stifle debate on this issue”.

“ActionSA is undeterred by the bullish mischaracterisation of our position and will continue with our resolve to advocate for the people of South Africa on this issue by applying maximum pressure, alongside like-minded parties, on the Department of Home Affairs to restore the integrity of South Africa’s immigration regime,” she said.