Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › South Africa

Saidi v. Minister of Home Affairs

Constitutional Court of South Africa · South Africa · 2018-04-24 · National court

Citation: [2018] ZACC 9
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Must an asylum seeker’s permit be extended while a court reviews the refusal of their claim?

What the court decided

Yes. The permit remains in force, and must be extended, until judicial review is finished.

In plain language

Asylum seekers whose claims were refused lost their papers while they challenged the refusal in court, so they could be arrested or lose their jobs. The court said the papers must stay valid until the case ends.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Pencari suaka yang permohonannya ditolak kehilangan dokumen selama menggugat penolakan itu, sehingga bisa ditangkap atau kehilangan pekerjaan. Pengadilan menyatakan dokumen harus tetap berlaku sampai perkara selesai.

Pertanyaan: Haruskah izin pencari suaka diperpanjang selama pengadilan meninjau penolakan permohonannya?

What happened afterwards

  • 2018-04-24: Permits extended pending review.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/za-saidi-2018/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.