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[FILE] Person wearing a t-shirt written ” No illegal migration”
The Tsietsi Mashinini Community Centre in Soweto is appealing for urgent assistance in documenting the children of migrants.
The centre, which houses mostly unaccompanied migrant minors, says many of them are unable to access basic services such as education and healthcare.
Bishop Paul Verryn from the Methodist Church, which runs the centre, says there are children who have been in South Africa for almost 21 years, and they deserve to be granted permanent residence.
“There are children who have been in this country for 19, 20, 21 years from Zimbabwe, for instance and have got no place to go back to in Zimbabwe and so the ideal would be that they be granted permanent residence. I happen to think that just as South Africans, every South African, irrespective of gender, irrespective of race, is a gift to this country.”
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