Chris Watters Attorneys (Bedforview)

We specialise in Immigration Law in its various dimensions. The firm does not accept any other instructions. We handle all work, business and other temporary residence pemit applications whether to be lodged in Johannesburg or at any other centre or Embassy.

We also handle all permanent residence applications. We deal with all internal Departmental appeals and disputes around prohibitions, declarations of undesirability and deportations. In addition we accept instructions on disputes around nationality or refugee law and/or extradition issues.  To date we have three reported judgments from the Constitutional Court on immigration and refugee law.

Chris Watters has been practising in the fields of administrative law and human rights since 1985. He is a member of the Immigration and Refugee Law Committees of both the Law Society of the Northern Provinces and of the Law Society of South Africa. He was a member of the Immigration Advisory Board from 2003 until resigning in 2005.

In April 2015, he was recently appointed by the Minister of Home Affairs to sit on a panel of experts to advise the Minister on possible revisions of South Africa's current visa systems and processes.

He regularly does training for attorneys' bodies on immigration and refugee law. He also writes regularly on the subject. Mr. Watters is also a member of the SA law Reform Commission's task team on the revision of South Africa's immigration laws.

Mr. Watters is the only South African attorney who is a member of the international Alliance of Business Immigration Lawyers (www.abil.com) an association of corporate immigration lawyers around the world (based on peer nomination) which gives our clients access to specialist immigration lawyers in all the major destinations for advice on emigration from South Africa and related advice.

Who's Who: Corporate Immigration Law has listed Chris Watters since 2010.  In 2015 that publication listed him as the third most "highly regarded" immigration lawyer in Africa and the Middle East - the first two lawyers being from countries in the Middle East.