19 December 2008
	2010 SOCCER WORLD CUP - 2 Check-in sorted for 2010 By Larry Claasen

Getting through immigration control will become a lot easier for travellers to SA during and after the 2010 soccer World Cup if a plan by the home affairs department is implemented. Visitors to SA often complain about waiting for more than an hour to get through customs and immigration control - after a long flight to get here. From 2010, though, they'll be able to go through immigration at several airports abroad before boarding their flights. Home affairs plans to station officials at airports in the UK, Dubai, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and India during the soccer spectacular and may keep them there after the event. The department's 2010 programme manager, Morné Fourie, says the problem of long queues at SA airports is the result of a large number of long-haul international flights landing around the same time each morning. He says home affairs will talk to the Airports Company SA about staggering the flights to ease congestion during the World Cup. Fourie points out that travellers will still have to go through customs when arriving in SA. Stationing immigration officials abroad is one of several measures home affairs is putting in place to ease travel. Other measures include housing immigration officials from SA and neighbouring countries in the same building at high-traffic border crossings, moving staff from low-traffic border posts to busier ones, and creating an "event visa" which eases travel restrictions for visitors from African countries. These measures will facilitate travel to SA but will do nothing to make the country's borders more secure. Home affairs minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula says little can be done about making SA's porous, 7 660 km border more secure. She says SA could adopt the apartheid government's approach of putting up electric fences but this won't help. "Undocumented workers will always find a way in," she says.