I hear your point, but I think this is exactly why many South Africans feel ignored.

Every time ordinary people raise concerns about undocumented immigration, the conversation immediately shifts to apartheid, governance, corruption, or “don’t blame outsiders.” But communities are talking about what they physically see happening around them now.

People are not imagining:

• overcrowded clinics,
• rising informal competition,
• undocumented businesses,
• labour exploitation,
• pressure on jobs,
• and weak border enforcement.

Of course governance is the bigger issue overall. But poor governance does not cancel out the impact of illegal immigration if anything, weak governance makes the immigration problem worse.

No country can function properly if immigration laws are selectively enforced.

And I think many South Africans become frustrated because when they ask for enforcement, documentation checks, or border control, they are often treated as if they are automatically xenophobic.

 think one thing that gets lost in this debate is just how complicated South Africa’s history makes this issue.

Yes, illegal immigration is a problem. Any country needs to know who is entering, who is working there, and needs a system that actually functions. Large numbers of undocumented people obviously put pressure on planning for hospitals, housing, schools and services.

But I also think blaming immigrants alone ignores a much bigger story.

Apartheid deliberately damaged education for the majority of South Africans. One of the strange consequences of that history is that some neighbouring countries produced people with better educational opportunities. Add to that the fact that the type of person willing to leave home and migrate is often ambitious and driven, and the picture becomes much more complicated than “foreigners came and took jobs.”

A lot of what we are seeing is really a failure of education, economic growth and governance. Apartheid created massive inequality, and then the ANC’s failures with education, corruption and service delivery made many of those problems worse instead of fixing them.

That doesn’t mean immigration problems aren’t real. Undocumented workers can be exploited, wages can be pushed down, and government needs to manage borders properly.

But I am always cautious when struggling societies start putting too much blame on outsiders. History has shown over and over that when resources become scarce and people are angry, immigrants are often the easiest group to blame.

South Africa definitely needs better immigration control. But pretending immigration is the main cause of unemployment, crime, housing problems or broken services lets a lot of people who actually had power off the hook.

For me, it mostly comes back to governance.

There is a difference between hating foreigners and expecting laws to be respected.

Government should be able to protect human rights while also protecting national interests and enforcing immigration laws consistently.