Immigration Laws: September, 2001 - Number #14

China's household registration or hukou system, adopted in 1958, gives citizens few rights or recourse to protection once they leave their designated place of residence. There are an estimated 130 million Chinese-10 percent of all Chinese- living away from the place in which they are registered. Most are rural-urban migrants, young people who have abandoned farms caught between rising costs and falling prices who migrate to coastal provinces and work in factories.

Wages for young women who assemble toys and other export items in industrial parks are $1 a day after taxes, or about $30 a month for six-day weeks, 10 hours a day. Most of the women live in dorms near the factory in which they work. Labor law sets a basic work week of 44 hours with at least one day off, and there is a local minimum wage of $48 a month in Guangdong, near China, plus higher rates for overtime. Workers are always available to replace those who quit or are fired.

In some cases, migrants are enslaved to work alongside local workers, who are treated as normal workers. For example, in May 2001, five migrant women being held and forced to work without pay at an industrial materials polishing factory in Hebei's Yanshan county took advantage of an electricity blackout to flee. Police found that they had been working alongside 30 local women who had been paid normally and were free to come and go. One expert says, "the hukou system institutionalizes an attitude that it's not our people so we're not responsible for them."

China has official trade unions, affiliated with the All-China Trade Union Federation, which had 90 million members in 1999, and does not tolerate independent unions. The minister of labor and social security says that Chinese workers enjoyed free association "in conformity with Chinese conditions" and that "no one has been detained or imprisoned for legitimate trade union activities."

US Visas. Many Chinese students and exchange visitors accepted by US universities and programs have been denied visas by US consulates in China. Some 21,500 US student visas were issued in China in FY00, up from 14,000 in FY98.

Taiwan. The number of foreign workers in Taiwan rose to a record of 329,612 in April 2001, including 105,222 domestic helpers (monthly salaries average NT$18,000 a month); 180,739 in manufacturing (NT$21,000); and 36,493 in construction (NT$20,000). Within Taiwan, 68,542 foreign workers were in Taoyuan Country, followed by 43,152 in Taipei County. Of the 464,628 foreigners (workers and dependents) in Taiwan, 143,821 are Thai; followed by 103,773 Indonesians; 90,059 from the Philippines; 26,834 from the US; and 20,951 from Japan.

Taiwan's President, Chen Shui-bian, has asked the cabinet to study the feasibility of imposing different minimum wages for domestic and foreign workers.

An estimated 800,000 of Taiwan's 22 million people lived full- or part-time on the mainland in 2001, including 300,000 in Shanghai; some 64 percent of young professionals questioned by the Taipei magazine Business Next said they would be willing to work on the mainland. Taiwanese businesses have invested between $40 billion and $100 billion on the mainland, creating at least three million jobs.

Over the last third of a century, waves of emigration have resulted from political events: in 1971, after Taiwan lost its seat in the United Nations to mainland China; in 1979, after the US established diplomatic relations with China, and again beginning in 2000, when 50 years of Nationalist rule in Taiwan came to an end. Many of the men emigrating to the mainland form second families there; an estimated 100,000 mainland women have legally married Taiwanese men.

Hong Kong. Hong Kong leaders would like to turn the city into a hub for southern China, much as New York City serves as a hub for a larger economic area. This ambition is, however undercut by the movement of many Hong Kong residents to the mainland. While migration from the mainland to Hong Kong is restricted, Hong Kong residents are free to live on the mainland. 40,000 Hong Kong residents have their primary residences in Guangdong, while 50,000 own vacation homes there. Some 230,000 people a day cross the border at Shenzhen.