What is a section 22 asylum seeker permit?

A person who applies for asylum in South Africa is issued a document under section 22 of the Refugees Act 130 of 1998. It is the most misunderstood permit in the system, partly because it has changed and partly because much of what is written about it describes a version of the law that no longer stands.

What it is, and is not

A section 22 permit is a temporary asylum seeker visa. It makes your presence in the Republic lawful while your application for refugee status is being decided. It is normally valid for a period of up to six months and can be extended by the Refugee Reception Office while the status determination process continues.

It is not refugee status. Refugee status is granted under section 24 and brings different and stronger rights, including a formal refugee identity document and a route to permanent residence after a period. Our guide on applying for asylum sets out the process that leads to that decision.

The gap between the two is where most people's lives are actually lived. Status determination takes years, and renewals every few months are the reality for a very long time.

Getting the permit in the first place

The 2020 amendments also put obstacles in front of people who had not entered South Africa properly. Sections 4(1)(h) and 4(1)(i) of the Refugees Act excluded from refugee status a person who entered other than through a designated port of entry, or who did not report to a Refugee Reception Office within five days of entry, unless they showed compelling reasons. Section 4(1)(f) excluded a person suspected of a document fraud offence. Section 21(1B), read with the regulations, required a person without an asylum transit visa to be interviewed and to show good cause before being allowed to apply.

Those barriers have gone. In Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town v Minister of Home Affairs [2026] ZACC 30, decided on 7 July 2026, the Constitutional Court confirmed that sections 4(1)(f), 4(1)(h), 4(1)(i) and 21(1B) are unconstitutional and invalid. The order was not suspended and nothing was read in. The regulations that imposed the good cause test had already been struck down by the High Court. The Court built on Ruta (2018) and Abore (2021): a person who wants asylum must be allowed to apply, however and whenever they arrived, and may not be sent back before the claim is decided on its merits. Delay can still count when an officer assesses whether your account is credible.

Practice at Refugee Reception Offices has not settled. Home Affairs issued an operational directive to give effect to the judgment and then withdrew it on 9 October 2026, saying it would find the most appropriate way to comply. If you are turned away, get help from one of the organisations named below.

Work and study are no longer automatic

This is the change that catches people out most.

Amendments that took effect on 1 January 2020 rewrote section 22, and subsections 22(6) to 22(11) mean that an asylum seeker no longer has an automatic right to work and study. The right must be endorsed on the permit, following an assessment of whether the applicant is able to support themselves in any other way. Under section 22(8), work may not be endorsed for a person who can support themselves, or who is being given shelter and basic necessities by the UNHCR or a charity.

An asylum seeker who wants to work therefore has to apply for the endorsement, and the Standing Committee assesses it while the asylum claim itself is being adjudicated.

The practical consequences are hard. An asylum seeker without the endorsement who works is working unlawfully, and an employer who employs them is exposed under the Immigration Act. An asylum seeker who cannot work and has no other means is in exactly the position the assessment is meant to identify, which is the circularity at the heart of the provision.

If you hold a section 22 permit, look at what is actually endorsed on it. Do not assume you may work because you once could, and do not assume you may not because somebody told you the rules changed. Read the document.

The abandonment provision was struck down

This is the part where most published guidance is out of date, and it matters enormously.

The 2020 amendments also provided that where an asylum seeker failed to renew their permit within one month of its expiry, the claim would be presumed abandoned. The consequence of abandonment was that the person was no longer an asylum seeker at all, and became liable to deportation. A discretion existed only where the person could satisfy the Standing Committee that there were compelling reasons for the expired permit.

Those automatic abandonment provisions, sections 22(12) and 22(13), were declared unconstitutional, and the Constitutional Court confirmed that declaration in Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town v Minister of Home Affairs [2023] ZACC 45, decided on 12 December 2023. The declaration operates back to 1 January 2020, when the provisions came into force. This is a different case from the 2026 judgment on access to the system described above, although the same organisation brought both.

So a person whose permit has lapsed is not, by that fact alone, to be treated as having abandoned their claim and deported.

Two cautions follow, and both are important.

This is not permission to let a permit lapse. An expired permit still leaves you without valid documentation, exposed to arrest and detention, and unable to do the ordinary things the permit enables. Renew on time.

Practice lags judgments. People whose permits have expired are still turned away at Refugee Reception Offices by officials applying a rule that no longer stands. If that happens to you, the answer is not to give up. Get assistance from Lawyers for Human Rights, the Scalabrini Centre, the Legal Resources Centre or a university law clinic, all of which do this work, and put the position in writing.

Renewal, in practice

Renewal is the recurring administrative burden of asylum seeker life, and the practical difficulties are well known: Refugee Reception Offices that are closed or oversubscribed, long queues, travel costs, and appointments that have to be taken during working hours.

What helps:

Diarise the expiry and go early. Do not wait for the final week.

Keep every previous permit. The chain of renewals is your evidence of continuous lawful presence, and it becomes important years later.

Keep proof of every attempt. Where an office turns you away, note the date, the office and the reason, and ask for it in writing. A person who can show they attended three times before expiry is in a very different position from one who cannot.

Update your address with the office. A great deal goes wrong because correspondence goes to an address from four renewals ago.

What the permit allows

While it is valid, a section 22 permit means:

Lawful presence. You may be in South Africa and you may not be deported while your claim is pending. This is the core protection, and it reflects the principle of non-refoulement: a person may not be returned to a country where they face persecution.

Access to basic services. Including emergency medical care and basic education for children, which are constitutional entitlements not dependent on immigration status.

Work and study, where endorsed. See above.

Opening a bank account, in principle, though in practice banks apply their own requirements and this is a recurring difficulty.

If your claim is rejected

A rejection is not the end of the process.

Claims are rejected either as unfounded or as manifestly unfounded, abusive or fraudulent, and the routes differ. An unfounded rejection goes on appeal to the Refugee Appeals Authority. The other category goes for review to the Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs.

While a properly lodged appeal or review is pending, you remain an asylum seeker and your permit should continue to be extended. Being rejected at first instance does not make you immediately deportable.

Our guide on your rights if you are detained for deportation sets out the limits on detention, which apply regardless of the stage your claim has reached.

Employing an asylum seeker

Employers ask about this constantly and get it wrong in both directions, either refusing to consider anyone with a section 22 permit or hiring without looking at the document at all.

The position is straightforward. A section 22 permit holder may be employed where the permit is endorsed to permit work. Where it is not, employing them exposes the employer under the Immigration Act, and the fact that the person holds a valid asylum seeker permit does not cure that.

What an employer should therefore do is look at the endorsement rather than at the permit as a whole, diarise the expiry, and ask for the renewed document each time. What an employer should not do is assume that an asylum seeker cannot lawfully be employed at all, because many can.

Separately, and importantly: an employee's immigration status does not remove their labour rights while they are employed. Wages earned are owed, and an employer who discovers a status problem cannot use it to avoid paying for work already done.

Documents in daily life

A great deal of the difficulty with a section 22 permit is not legal but practical, and it is worth naming because people assume they are uniquely unlucky.

Banks, cellular providers, landlords, schools and medical schemes all have their own verification processes, and a paper permit that expires every six months sits awkwardly in systems designed for identity documents. Refusals are common and are frequently based on internal policy rather than on any legal requirement.

Where a service is refused, ask for the reason in writing and for the policy it relies on. Basic education for children and emergency medical care are constitutional entitlements that do not depend on immigration status, and a school or clinic refusing on status grounds is usually wrong. For private services the position is weaker, but a written refusal is still the first step towards a complaint.

Worked example

This example is illustrative. Grace applies for asylum in 2022 and is issued a section 22 permit. She renews it every six months. In 2024 she misses a renewal by six weeks because the office was closed on the two occasions she travelled to it, and when she returns she is told her claim has been abandoned and she must leave the country.

That instruction reflects a provision that has been declared unconstitutional and confirmed as such by the Constitutional Court. Grace is not to be treated as having abandoned her claim merely because the permit lapsed for six weeks.

What she needs is the record: the dates she attended, the reasons she was turned away, and anything in writing. With that, and with assistance from one of the organisations that litigate in this area, the position can be put to the office in writing rather than argued at a counter.

What she should also do is check what is endorsed on her permit regarding work. If she has been working without the endorsement, that is a separate exposure for her and for her employer, and it is better identified now than discovered later.