Immigration News: October, 2004 - Volume 11

Southeast Asia

Malaysia. Malaysia plans to deport at least 700,000 of the 1.2 million Indonesian migrants in 2004-05, and then admit Indonesian migrants under an MOU signed in May 2004. Legal migrants will receive a chip-based MyKad identity card. Indonesian migrants were reportedly leaving Malaysia as enforcement efforts were stepped up, as police began to arrest and beat illegal migrants with rattan rods. However, others remained because they had not been paid for months by oil palm plantations and contractors at construction sites.

The Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) says some companies now hire irregular foreign workers because the current worker recruitment system is cumbersome, complicated and time-consuming.

Malaysia in 2002 deported 300,000 unauthorized Indonesian migrants, many of whom wound up in Nunukan, an Indonesian island of East Kalimantan province near the eastern coast of Sabah. There was insufficient food and water, and 80 migrants died before Indonesia was able to help them return home.

Beginning August 10, 2004, Malaysian employers will be required to hire Indonesian migrant workers directly from authorized Indonesian labor exporting companies that provide migrants with pre-departure training; currently, most migrants are hired through Malaysian recruitment companies. Migrants are to arrive without their families and with proof of insurance, and to be paid the prevailing wage of RM 1,000 (US$263) a month for the three years (extendable to five years) that they are in Malaysia.

Malaysia's legal foreign work force is 1.3 million, 12 percent of the country's total. Indonesians are about 66 percent of the migrants, followed by 9.2 percent Nepalese; eight percent Bangladeshis; 4.5 percent Indians; and 4.2 from Myanmar. About 31 percent are employed in manufacturing with the rest in services, construction and plantations.

Malaysia has an estimated 10,000 professionals abroad, and has a program under which they can apply to return, with the government guaranteeing them their foreign salary. Some 650 applied to return, and 250 applications were accepted by August 2004.

Indonesia. The Indonesian government in October 2004 enacted a new migration protection law that was opposed by NGOs because, they said, it assigns multiple roles for the government, from promoting labor exports to regulating labor exporters. Under the law, those who send workers abroad without a license can be fined up to $1.5 million or jailed two years.

There are an estimated two million Indonesians abroad, including one million who are unauthorized; about 70 percent of the unauthorized Indonesians are in Malaysia, and 30 percent are in the Gulf states.

Trafficking young girls from rural Indonesia to Malaysia is a growing business, according to UNICEF, which says that East Asia may have a third of the girls under 18 who are trafficked each year. Poor parents are willing to send their daughters with well-dressed strangers who promise them higher wage jobs abroad, and do not expect to hear from them for a year or more.

Indonesia requires firms hiring foreign workers to pay a $100 a month levy.

Singapore. Singapore, a country of 4.2 million with a fertility rate of 1.3, is seeking to boost births by offering S$3,000 ($1,750) for a first child, S$9,000 for a second, and S$18,000 for a third and fourth. Maternity leave is being extended from eight to 12 weeks, and the levy on foreign maids will be reduced from S$345 a month to S$250 a month for families with a child under 12.

In the 1960s, the average woman had six children, and the Singapore government launched a "Stop At Two" policy, using tax and other incentives to curb family growth. The government has since 1987 encouraged more births, especially among educated women, but the emphasis on work and career has kept the birth rate down.

Singapore got a new prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, the son of Singapore's founding leader, Lee Kuan Yew, in August 2004. The new prime minister acknowledged that Singapore must relax some government controls, help children learn to think independently and make the nation "open and inclusive" so that the global city of four million is "linked to the whole world."

Philippines. Angelo de la Cruz, a 46-year-old Filipino truck driver and father of eight freed by Iraqi captors in July 2004, arrived home to a hero's welcome, hailed as the "Filipino Everyman" who goes abroad for employment. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said that, if the Philippines had not withdrawn its troops and had de la Cruz freed, some 1.5 million Filipinos working in the Middle East could have been at risk. Filipinos in Iraq earn $500 to $1,000 a month, compared to $140 a month at home.

The Philippine government banned the deployment of migrants to Iraq, prompting protests in Manila from potential migrants. The Philippines, a country of 84 million with eight million migrants in more than 100 countries, expects $8 billion in remittances in 2004, about the same as 2003. In 2003, 54 percent of the $7.6 billion in remittances came from the US, followed by nine percent from Saudi Arabia, and five percent from Japan.

Until 1997, Filipino Overseas Foreign Workers owed two percent of their gross income in taxes. There have been discussions in 2004 of reinstating the tax to help cover government deficits, prompting OFWs with low earnings abroad to complain that they do not earn enough to live abroad, send money home to their families, and pay taxes- many low earners would be exempt, but some fear that corrupt officials would demand tax payments to obtain services. OFWs with higher earnings complained that they pay taxes to the countries in which they work, and that any taxes they paid to the Philippine government would be lost to corruption. OFWs remitted $7.6 billion in 2003.

Ships employing 1.2 million seamen carry 90 percent of globally traded goods, and a third of ordinary seamen (known as "ratings") are Filipinos. The Filipinos displaced Indians on board many ships in the 1980s, and they risk being replaced by lower-wage seamen from Eastern Europe, who are about 25 percent of the global seamen labor force, and China (six percent), Vietnam and other countries that supply workers for less than the $1,100 to $1,500 a month that a Filipino costs ship owners, including overtime and benefits. Maritime academies are springing up to train seamen, who must speak English and learn basic seafaring skills.

Vietnam. Vietnam began sending migrants abroad in 1980, and between 1980 and 1990, some 280,000 Vietnamese migrants went to the ex-USSR, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia, 20,000 to Iraq, and 7,000 professionals to Africa under bilateral agreements that moved workers between government agencies-- recruitment by the Vietnamese government and placement by host governments. Vietnam began to adopt market-oriented policies in 1986 and Decree 370 in 1991 allowed state-owned companies to send workers abroad; they first obtain contracts for migrants abroad, receive Labor Ministry approval, and then recruit workers.

In 1999, Decree 152 liberalized exporting migrants further, allowing other organizations to send workers abroad and three private recruiters. Instead of getting contracts approved, companies sending migrants abroad only have to register their contracts, not have them approved. In 2003, Decree 81 allowed all types of firms to be licensed to send migrants abroad, and fees charged to recruiting agencies were reduced; 140 were state owned and five were private in 2004. Once a Vietnamese company has at least 200 migrants abroad, the company is supposed to send a representative abroad to take care of the migrants, but some receiving countries do no want to give visas to company representatives.

The Vietnamese government promotes overseas employment by helping to recruit qualified migrants from poor areas, and established an Overseas Employment Support Fund with government funds. Both the government and agencies train workers, including in the language of the country to which they are being sent- potential migrants pay for their own training. There are MOUs between Vietnam and Laos, Russia, Czech Republic, Vietnam and Korea.

Some 75,000 migrants were sent abroad in 2003, when there was a stock 350,000 Vietnamese migrants abroad, including 75,000 in Malaysia and 40,000 in Taiwan; other destinations are Korea, Japan and the Middle East; remittances totaled $1.5 billion in 2003. In some cases, Vietnamese migrants are employed by Vietnamese companies abroad, such as the 10,000 Vietnamese in Laos.

Vietnam has about 80 million residents, with a labor force of 41 million growing two percent or a million a year. Unemployment is about six percent in urban areas, and in rural areas workers are employed an average 78 percent of the work time available to them (time use rate).

Cambodia. Cambodia is riddled with corruption; almost half of the oil, fish, salt and rice supplied by the United Nations World Food Program in 2003-04 for work-for-food programs was diverted or stolen by government officials. Corruption is widespread, with government officials earning $20 a month supplementing their salaries by soliciting bribes from companies that they "inspect" frequently. Lack of infrastructure increases emigration pressures, which may rise in 2005 when the end of garment quotas threatens the $1.3-billion export-oriented garment industry.

Cambodia became the 148th member of the World Trade Organization in September 2004 to preserve its garment exports, which are 80 percent of its exports. Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam are seeking to join the WTO.

"Malaysia plans new policy to cut reliance on foreign labor," Agence France Presse, September 10, 2004.