Why Are We Donating Our Jobs to Foreigners?

27 April 2011

editorial

Nairobi — Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang’s response to a question in Parliament on Wednesday about the number of foreigners granted work permits was baffling and needs further interrogation.

Between 2007 and last year, the minister said, some 26,000-plus foreigners were granted work permits, among them 10,000 Indians and about 3,500 Chinese.

The following questions quickly come to mind: What expertise do these people have that is not locally available?

If they are experts, why hasn’t their impact been felt in the economy?

We are raising these questions for good reasons. The first is that the country teems with thousands of qualified but unemployed youths.

Unemployment is a serious social and security challenge that every well-meaning government strives to tame.

Secondly, a large influx of foreigners has serious security implications.

Experience has shown that some potentially dangerous people pretend to be experts to gain access to a foreign country, only to commit heinous crimes later and vanish.

Although the minister explained that the permits are issued after thorough vetting by a multi-sectoral panel, among them trade unionists and labour experts, questions have always been asked about the transparency of the process.

At any rate, a minister has powers to intervene in the process at any stage. Indeed, this has happened often in the past; the cases are well-documented.

In the circumstances, it is vital to conduct an audit to establish if those granted work permits actually possess the skills they claim, and for that matter the value of those purported skills to the country’s economy.

Otherwise, the country will find itself locking out its graduates from the few jobs available and handing them to unqualified foreigners.

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