Critical Skills and General Work Visa

A real points test, gazetted in 2024

South Africa published a statutory points system on 18 October 2024 — Government Gazette 51416, Notice 5448, under regulations 18(12) and 18(13) of the Immigration Regulations 2014.

It governs two visas with the same pass mark of 100. The difference is composition, not total.

The two routes to 100

The Critical Skills Work Visa gets there through a listed occupation, which scores 100 on its own.

The General Work Visa gets there by any other combination — a master's or doctorate at 50 plus an employment offer above R976,194 at 50, for instance. Ten years of experience scores 30, five to ten years 20, a bachelor's or honours 30, an offer between R650,976 and R976,194 adds 20, an offer from a Trusted Employer adds 30, and proficiency in one official language adds 10.

That second route matters. Before this gazette, a skills-based route that did not depend on a listed occupation did not exist.

English already counts

English is one of South Africa's eleven official languages. The language points are therefore available to most applicants from India with no test at all — a small row that people routinely fail to claim.

The reason this page exists

Permanent residence under section 27(b) requires five years of post-qualification experience — not five years of residence in South Africa.

Nearly every other permanent residence system counts time spent inside the country. This one counts time spent in your profession, wherever you spent it. A professional with five years behind them satisfies that criterion on the day they apply, and needs a SAQA-recognised professional body certificate to evidence it.

That is faster than almost anything comparable, and it is not widely marketed.

What a calculator cannot tell you

Whether your occupation is on the critical skills list. That is a separate gazette, it changes, and it is worth the entire pass mark. Checking it takes one search and is the highest-value thing you can do before anything else.

Where it goes wrong

Treating the work visa and permanent residence as one application. Relying on a critical skills list that has since been reissued. And quoting net-worth figures for the financially-independent route — the Regulations leave those to ministerial gazette, and the numbers circulating online match no official source we could find.

Who this suits

A professional with a recognised degree and five or more years in their field who wants permanent residence rather than a long temporary run. The experience rule is the entire argument, and it favours people who have already done the years.