They won a court orderagainst Home Affairs, but Gary Eisenberg claims it’s“meaningless in the face of the department’s incompetence”.
|||Cape Times - They won a court order against Home Affairs, but immigration lawyer Gary Eisenberg claims it became “meaningless in the face of the department’s incompetence”.
Eisenberg submitted this in an affidavit that is part of a court application in which his firm and three other applicants want the department declared in contempt of court.
This is the latest development in a court wrangle to get Home Affairs to adjudicate a handful of outstanding applications for permanent residence permits.
The group’s main application was lodged in the Western Cape High Court in May, asking that the court issue an order for 110 applications to be processed. They secured a court order on May 18, by which time 75 applications remained.
The parties agreed that 51 would be finalised by July 18, while the others – those that were incomplete, on appeal or in need of corrections – would be done by August 20.
The department missed all these deadlines.
Eisenberg said that of the 75 applications, the department finalised only 28 by the deadline. This left 47.
The group now seek several orders – relating to the alleged contempt of court, to compliance with the original high court order, and to the “hurried rejection” of some of the applications.
In an answering affidavit, Home Affairs director-general Mkuseli Apleni contended that the department had not willfully failed to comply with a court order.
He argued he was not in contempt of court just because the outstanding applications hadn’t been finalised by the cut-off dates. These dates “were not cast in stone”.
The department had only nine full-time permanent residence adjudicators.
Judgment in the contempt of court matter was reserved on Thursday.
Cape Times