Migration from Asia to traditional immigration countries was largely blocked until the mid-1960s, when policy reforms in Canada and the United States allowed Asian pro- fessionals who were off ered jobs by Canadian and US employers to immigrate. Th ese professionals usually arrived with their families, and most climbed the economic lad- der quickly. Indeed, the earnings of foreign-born men caught up to those of US-born men of the same age and education within an average 13 years. Th ereaft er, Asian men earned more than similar US-born men, suggesting that the extra drive and ambition that prompts international migration could expand the US economy and raise average earnings (Chiswick, 1978). 2
Today, Asian nations are a major source of immigrants to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Aft er the Vietnam War ended in 1975, a million Southeast Asian refugees were resettled in Canada and the United States, forging new migration networks that continue to add immigrants via family unifi cation. Many Asian students earn university degrees in traditional immigration destinations, and some set- tle and form or unite families.
Most international labor migration in Asia involves workers moving from one Asian nation to another for temporary employment. Th e fi rst signifi cant labor fl ows began aft er oil price hikes in 1973–74, when Gulf oil exporters turned to foreign con- tractors who hired foreign workers to build infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges (Abella, 1995). As the demand for labor shift ed from construction to services, and from men to women, some predicted that Arabs would replace Asian migrants for language and cultural reasons (Birks and Sinclair, 1980). Th is did not happen and, despite eff orts to “nationalize” Gulf work forces by prohibiting foreign- ers from fi lling some types of jobs, migrants from south and southeast Asia appear poised to continue to dominate private sector labor forces in most Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
There is also significant migration from one Asian country to a neighboring country, as exemplified by Indonesian workers in Malaysia and Burmese workers in Thailand (Hugo and Young). Migration policies in Malaysia and Thailand are in flux. The Malaysian government has several times announced plans to reduce the employment of migrants, but these have not been implemented. Meanwhile, the Thai government continues to register unauthorized migrants from Burma, Cambodia, and Laos periodically despite assertions that each registration is the last (Martin, 2003; Migration News).
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UN data on migrant stocks by country over time include foreigners who have been in a country at least 12 months, and the data do not distinguish migrants by legal status or the purpose of migration. In East and Southeast Asia, the UN data show that South Korea had a decrease in its migrant stock between 2000 and 2010. However, the Korean Ministry of Public Administration and Security reported 1.2 million foreign residents in June 2010, more than double the 535,000 reported by the UN. 3
4.2.1 Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
As mentioned above, migration policies of the major Asian countries receiving migrants can be framed by a triangle. At one corner is Singapore, welcoming foreign profession- als and their families to settle but rotating less-skilled migrant workers in and out of the country. In 2010, 35 percent of Singapore’s three million workers, over one million, were foreigners, and they dominated employment in construction, shipyards, and house- holds (domestic helpers). Th e share of foreigners in Singapore’s work force has increased more than ten-fold since 1970, when it was 3 percent.
Th e Singapore government welcomes “foreign talent.” Th ese professionals, mostly from China, India, and Malaysia, may move to Singapore with their families, achieve permanent residence status aft er two years, and become naturalized citizens aft er two more years. Less-skilled migrants, on the other hand, may not bring their families, are subject to removal if they become pregnant, and do not earn an automatic right to settle in Singapore, even by marrying a Singaporean citizen. Employers of low-skilled migrants are subject to dependency ceilings that regulate the mix of foreign and Singaporean workers in the workplace and must pay a signifi cant levy or tax on the wages paid to the foreign workers they employ. 4
Th e government believes that foreign talent is essential to Singapore’s growth and prosperity and aims to induce more foreign professionals to immigrate and to raise fertility among more educated citizens. Former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew oft en reminds residents that their resource-poor country must compete on the basis of human capital. However, in response to fears of too many foreign workers, Finance Minister Th arman Shanmugaratnam in December 2009 said: “Growing dependence on foreign workers is not a sustainable strategy for the long term,” and announced that the levy on foreign workers would increase July 1, 2010, from the current S$150 to S$470 a month, to slow the growth of the foreign work force (Migration News).
Hong Kong is another city-state with a welcome-the-skilled and rotate-the-unskilled migrant worker policy. As the fi nancial and supply chain hub for southeastern China, Hong Kong’s government has, since 1999, allowed employers to hire foreigners with pro- fessional skills not available locally who are paid market wages (for the fi rst fi ve years, half of such migrants had PhDs). Foreign professionals may arrive with their families and receive permanent residence status aft er seven years.
Hong Kong, with seven million residents, is less welcoming toward low-skilled for- eign workers, most of whom are domestic helpers from the Philippines and Indonesia.
About 250,000 Hong Kong households employ a foreign woman to provide child and/or elder care. 5 Hong Kong requires that domestic helpers be paid a minimum wage, which was HK$3,580 dollars ($460) a month in 2010, and Hong Kong employers must also provide domestic helpers with room and board. 6 Filipino migrants in Hong Kong are well-organized, and they have protested against the migration policies of the Filipino and Hong Kong governments ([www.unifi l.org.hk]).
In October 1989 Taiwan allowed the entry of foreign workers to help complete high-priority infrastructure projects, including highways and subways. Th is so-called open-door policy was small, giving Taiwan about 3,000 migrant workers in 1991.
However, migrant workers soon spread to factories and later to private households, as foreigners became caregivers for children 7 and the elderly. By 2008, there were 375,000 migrant workers, and foreigners were 10 percent of all workers in low-skill jobs. Th e 2008-09 recession reduced the number of migrants employed in manufacturing, but the number of migrant caregivers remained stable.
Taiwan’s migrants, most from Indonesia, the Philippines, Th ailand, and Vietnam, oft en complain about the high fees they must pay to the brokers who arrange their employment. Th e maximum fee should be a month’s wages for each year of a worker’s contract, but many migrants report paying much more than 8 percent—reports of recruitment fees that are 20 to 30 percent of foreign earnings are common. Because of these high recruitment fees, which are deducted from the migrant’s pay, some migrants can earn more as unauthorized workers, so they “run away” from the employer to whom they have been assigned. Th e Council of Labor Aff airs (COLA), which regulates the employment of migrant workers in Taiwan, pays tips to residents who report violations of immigration laws. 8
Migrants want to work in Taiwan because of relatively high wages, which were NT$17,280 ($510) a month in 2009 or about $3 an hour in all sectors except care giving, where the minimum wage is NT$15,840 a month. Th e COLA aims to reduce the growing dependence of some sectors on migrants, and in 2009 limited migrants to a maximum 20 percent of each manufacturer’s work force.
4.2.2 Japan and Korea
Japan and South Korea are homogenous societies that have been largely closed to for- eigners; less than 2 percent of residents are foreigners, versus 10 percent or more in industrial countries in Europe and North America. In both Japan and Korea, foreign professionals and the descendents of past emigrants are welcomed, although numbers are low. However, Japan and Korea have diverged on policies toward low-skilled migrant workers. Japan’s low-skilled migrants are trainees, students, and unauthorized foreign- ers, while Korea in 2004 began to replace foreign trainees paid less than the minimum wage with migrant workers entitled to the minimum wage.
Japan had about 2.2 million foreign residents in 2009, including 943,000 perma- nent residents (410,000 were Koreans who settled in Japan before the end of WWII)
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and 1.2 million temporary foreign residents. Foreigners are about 1.7 percent of Japan’s 128 million residents, and 40,000 foreigners a year obtain permanent resident status in Japan.
Almost a million foreigners were employed in Japan in 2009, including 230,000 Nikkeijin, the descendents of Japanese emigrants to Brazil and Peru a century ago.
Japan also had 200,000 highly skilled foreigners, 170,000 unauthorized foreigners, and 122,000 foreign trainees and interns, but all these foreign workers were less than 2 per- cent of Japan’s 62 million workers.
In 1989, the Japanese government in made it easier for employers to hire low-skilled foreign trainees, who are supposed to receive training in advanced production tech- niques that will be useful when they return to their countries of origin. However, the trainee program is controversial because trainees are not considered workers and thus not entitled to the minimum wage. Japan’s minimum wage varies by prefecture, but averaged 713 yen ($8.60) an hour in 2010. First-year foreign trainees until 2011 received an allowance of 60,000 to 80,000 yen a month, or 375 to 500 yen an hour for those work- ing 40 hours a week.
For most of the past two decades, foreign trainees were not considered workers, so they were not entitled to the Japanese minimum wage that varies by prefecture but aver- aged 713 yen ($8.60) an hour in 2010. Instead, fi rst-year foreign trainees received an allowance of 60,000 to 80,000 yen a month, or 375 to 500 yen an hour for those working 40 hours a week. 9 However, concerns about overwork remain because several trainees in their 20s and 30s died, according to offi cial reports, of karoshi (overwork). 10
Japan has the world’s fastest-aging society. Its median age of 44 and life expectancy of 83 in 2010 are among the world’s highest, while fertility of 1.4 is among the world’s low- est. Th e population of 127 million in 2010 is expected to shrink to less than 90 million by 2050, when 40 percent of Japanese are projected to be 65 or older. Many Japanese employers believe that Japan will have to open doors to migrants to maintain its econ- omy, but a 2010 poll by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper found that two-thirds of Japanese opposed more immigration, fearing crime and cultural change. Ex-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed the feelings of many Japanese: “Just because there is a labor shortage does not mean we should readily allow [migrants] to come in.” (quoted in Kashiwazaki and Akaha, 2006).
Korea made one of the world’s most rapid transitions from sending workers abroad to receiving migrant workers. Th e number of Koreans in Gulf Cooperation Council coun- tries rose from 395 in 1974 to 162,000 in 1981 aft er the Korean government encouraged its construction fi rms to bid on contracts to provide jobs for Korean workers who were laid off as a result of the recession induced by higher oil prices. Korean workers earned
$750 a month for 48-hour weeks in the Gulf, and remitted $1.4 billion in 1981 (Kapur and McHale, 2006, 175), and the experience gained by Korean fi rms and workers in the Middle East was applied to large-scale infrastructure projects in Korea in the 1980s.
Economic growth turned Korea into a net importer of labor by the early 1990s. Th e government allowed employers to bring foreigners to Korea as trainees who would work and learn skills in Korean-owned factories that could be applied at home in factories
opened by Korean investors. However, the small and mid-sized manufacturing fi rms hiring trainees did not invest abroad, so the trainee program became a way for these fi rms to hire foreign workers to fi ll so-called three-D jobs, jobs that were dirty, diffi cult, and dangerous. Many trainees “ran away” from the Korean employers to whom they were assigned because they could earn more as illegal workers.
The Korean government recognized problems with the trainee system and began to replace foreign trainees with foreign workers under the Employment Permit System (EPS) ([www.eps.go.kr/wem/en/index.jsp]) in August 2004; the EPS has been the major avenue for low-skilled foreign workers to enter Korea since August 2008. 11 Korean employers with fewer than 300 employees in selected industries may apply for EPS migrants (90 percent are employed in small manufacturing) after a minimum 7-day failed effort to recruit Koreans (raised to 14 days in 2010). In a bid to protect migrants from abusive employers, EPS migrants may change employ- ers three times during their typical three-year stay in Korea (raised to five years in December 2009).
Migrant workers are recruited in the 15 Asian countries that have signed bilat- eral agreements with the Korean government (Kim, 2008). Government agencies in migrant-sending countries recruit workers who have passed a test of the Korean lan- guage, and Korean employers select migrants from these recruitment lists. Each country is given a quota of workers that can be selected to work in Korea, and long lists in coun- tries from Nepal to Vietnam ensure considerable frustration among potential migrants who assume that once they pass the Korean language test they will be on their way to a Korean factory and wages of $800 to $1,000 a month. About 200,000 migrants have been or are employed under the EPS, and the Korean government is working with part- ner sending countries to ensure that employment in Korea stimulates economic devel- opment in migrant-sending areas.
4.2.3 Gulf Cooperation Council
Th e Middle East, which stretches from Western Asia to North Africa, includes countries at the extremes of the labor migration spectrum, those that send most of their workers abroad and those that rely on migrant workers to fi ll most private-sector jobs. Some Middle East countries are uniquely dependent on remittances, including Palestine, and others both send workers abroad and receive migrants, including Jordan and Lebanon. Aft er oil prices rose in the 1970s, migrant workers were employed in the Gulf oil-exporting states to fi ll the jobs created by the spending of higher oil revenues on infrastructure, and migrants are now over 90 percent of private-sector workers in most Gulf oil exporters.
Th e major migrant destinations are the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Th e GCC countries had 15 million foreigners among 40 million residents in 2008; half of the foreigners were in Saudi Arabia. GCC countries have fast-growing populations and
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labor forces that seemingly belie the need for migrants. However, relatively few women work for wages in GCC countries, fertility is high, natives seek government- rather than private-sector jobs. 12 In 2010, the share of foreigners among residents ranged from a low of 28 percent in Oman to a high of over 86 percent in the UAE.
Migrant workers streamed into GCC countries aft er oil prices rose signifi cantly in the mid-1970s. Most of the fi rst migrants were from other Arab states; three-fourths in 1975. As the demand for migrants shift ed from construction to services, the Arab share of migrant workers was expected to increase for language reasons. Instead, the Arab share of migrant workers fell to a third in the mid-1980s, where it has remained, which Kapiszewski (2006) believes refl ects GCC government fears that too many Arabs could be a security threat. 13 Asian workers generally earn lower wages than Arab migrants, most arrive without families, and few settle.
Th e GCC countries have segmented economies and labor forces. Foreign- and native-born professionals operate the oil facilities that generate the region’s wealth, native-born and foreign workers fi ll government jobs, and foreign workers fi ll most private-sector jobs. Some oil-rich governments guarantee government jobs to natives, a policy that is becoming unsustainable in the face of rapid labor force growth. In order to persuade private employers to hire local workers, some GCC governments have nationalization policies that make bar foreigners from fi lling certain jobs (Noland and Pack, 2007).
Foreigners in GCC countries must have local sponsors (kafala) to enter, work, and leave the country. Most households are allowed to employ fi ve or more migrants to fi ll jobs ranging from domestic helper to gardener to driver. With sponsorships selling for
$1,000 or more in migrant-sending countries, migrants oft en arrive in debt and must work for up to fi ve months to repay sponsorship costs. 14 Migrant advocates have been critical of GCC governments as well as migrant-sending governments for not doing enough to protect migrants from the abuses of the sponsorship system (Human Rights Watch, 2004, 2008). In response, some GCC countries are making a government agency the sponsor of foreign workers in the country.
GCC countries oft en require employers to pay all recruitment-related fees, includ- ing the cost of mandatory health and criminal checks in migrant countries of origin.
However, with more workers wanting to go abroad than there are jobs, many migrant workers nonetheless pay recruiters and their agents, believing it will help them to go abroad sooner. Governments have found it hard to eliminate or restrict recruitment fees in migrant-sending countries.