Sadly some of these cases are happening to people who have lived all their lives here, from primary schools to Universities until they started to develop career paths in Botswana and began contributing to the economy in various positive ways.
A good number of these people today have no connections whatsoever with the so-called countries of origins where their parents migrated from many years ago to settle in Botswana. It is worrying that even after schooling here, working here for so long, these groups of people today find themselves still having to deal with work and residence permits renewal issues, and worst, deportations to their parents’ countries of origins, all in the name of creating jobs for Batswana. We need to be very careful lest we send out wrong signals out there to possible foreign investors, that we are an unwelcoming lot, thankless and cruel, when dealing with non-citizens even those that had invested so much in our economy. In fact it is embarrassing that we do not have a policy of automatic citizenship attainment or permanent residence attainment for those immigrants that have stayed in Botswana for at least 10 years. Today it has become common to see descendants of immigrants who have spent over 40 years in Botswana, still fighting for work permits renewal or being sent home, after more than 40 years in Botswana, a country they had come to call home.
