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As more and more immigrant countries opt for temporary versus permanent migration, millions of the world's migrant workers face a constant danger of exploitation, according to a new report(*) by the International Labour Office. The search for solutions to this universal problem occupied some 60 representatives from 31 countries at a tripartite meeting held in the ILO from 21 to 25 April.
They are numerous and they work around the world: an estimated 42 million migrant workers who provide cheap, unskilled or semi-skilled labour in scores of countries. In the hope of finding good jobs, they often are forced to sacrifice nearly everything temporarily. They may trade family and home life for a risky working life involving fraud, low pay, poor working conditions, and inadequate job security.
They are the migrants of today's global economy, and they are perhaps the world's most inherently vulnerable and unprotected category of workers. And as more and more immigrant countries choose temporary over permanent migration as a way of meeting the challenges of a rapidly globalizing economy, the problems faced by migrants are growing commensurately.
"Though most of these workers cross borders in the hope of improving their lot, exploitation is a constant danger for migrants," said Roger Böhning, an ILO official and one of the report's authors: "Inequities are particularly likely to be present when non-nationals are admitted temporarily for the purpose of fixed-term employment."
In addition, as the power of private, fee-charging recruitment agencies grows rapidly, many migrant workers - especially those in unskilled or non-technical jobs - suffer a host of indignities, including wholesale fraud, exorbitant fees, non-existent jobs, and often poor or even dangerous working conditions, the report says.
Migrants are rarely if ever treated on a par with nationals, nor are they adequately covered by existing international labour standards forged by the ILO over the past 75 years.
In addition to sub-standard working conditions, migrants may be put up in substandard housing at exorbitant rents, at the mercy of unscrupulous employers to whom they are tied for the duration of their admission. Migrants may also be obliged to contribute to social-security funds without ever receiving anything in return. The activities and rights of guest workers are restricted as a rule, at least initially. In spite of low levels of social protection, seasonal workers are often left to their own devices once the work is finished, and even prevented from moving to non-seasonal employment. Guest workers are often separated from their spouses and children, and sometimes separated from the society at large in restricted housing areas.
The trend toward temporary employment prevails irrespective of geography or levels of economic development of receiving countries. For example, in Canada, a traditional immigration country, the number of temporary worker visas issued quadrupled during the last decade. The average annual inflow of temporary workers into Canada was two and one half times larger than the number of permanent immigrants, with 234,000 temporary workers compared to 114,000 immigrant workers.
In the United States, another large immigration country, the number of non-immigrant work visas grew by 4 per cent annually, from 340,000 in 1990 to 413,000 in 1995. If business workers providing temporary services for their country or company had been included in the migration figures, the number of working, non-immigrant arrivals would have climbed from 3 million to 3.6 million.
Much the same pattern prevails in Australia, another traditional immigration country.
France has about 100,000 permanent immigrants, of whom 80,000 are from outside the EU: temporary workers included about 11,000 seasonal workers from Morocco and Poland. Germany has about 150,000 seasonal workers and another 100,000 foreign guest and contract workers. A middle-income country such as Mexico admits more than 70,000 workers from Central America each year for seasonal work in agriculture.
Throughout the Pacific-rim, which is a relatively newer destination for migrants, there are hardly any permanent migration-for-work schemes.
In the early 1990s, Japan established an elaborate system of more temporary openings for highly qualified foreigners and persons of Japanese descent, plus training-with-employment schemes for people from less developed countries in the region.
The number of migrant workers in the Republic of Korea, which developed similar training-with-employment schemes for the country's small to medium-sized enterprise sector, has trebled in recent years, from around 44,000 in 1992 to 136,000 in 1996.
The former socialist countries are also part of the trend. In the Czech Republic there were 14,500 foreign work-permit holders in mid-1992, nearly 32,900 in 1994 and 67,300, in addition to 67,000 Slovaks, in 1996. In the Russian Federation, which was previously isolated from international migration networks, the recent abolition of the State monopoly over placement will surely spur migration flows (although private recruitment agencies have already placed hundreds of Russians abroad, many in well-paid employment).
Simultaneously, private, fee-charging recruitment agencies are rapidly coming to dominate the organization of temporary migration with, for example, as much as 80 per cent of all movements of labour from Asian to Arab countries - one of the world's largest migrant flows - being handled by private agencies. In Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, private agencies dominate the organization of migration for employment abroad, "accounting for anywhere from 60 to 80 per cent of all migrant workers hired."
The report cites the private sector's undoubted efficiency and mobility in matching workers to jobs, but highlights a number of undesirable consequences, including fraud, exorbitant fees and unacceptable conditions of employment for migrant workers. The report cites the effect of private agencies as having been "especially hard on unskilled and non-technical workers".
Though statistics on fraud are rare, common recruitment malpractices in sending countries include:
* soliciting applications and demanding fees for non-existent jobs;
* withholding or giving false information on the nature of the jobs and terms of employment;
* charging fees well above the maximum allowed by regulations or the actual cost of recruitment;
* selecting applicants not on the basis of job qualifications, but on the amount of money they are willing to pay to get the job.
The goal of the Meeting of Experts was to come out with guidelines on how Governments might improve protection of migrant workers in temporary employment and those recruited by private agents (see box). The meeting enunciated the principles for treatment of temporary migrants who are inadequately covered by existing ILO Conventions.
The Tripartite Meeting (Geneva, 21-25 April) examined the special protection problems faced by citizens of one country who are employed, or pursue time-bound activities in another country, and it adopted a series of guidelines to inspire national action and ILO activities. Among the most important elements of the guidelines adopted at the meeting, were the following points on special protective measures for migrant workers in time-bound activities:
* "Tying time-bound migrants to a particular employer, occupation or sector is normal but, on human rights grounds, cannot be extended indefinitely. On economic grounds, too, the practice of tied employment in selected sectors should be strictly limited in time because it is tantamount to a measure of protection of employers, occupations or sectors benefiting from access to foreign workers at the expense of other employers in the same country or abroad."
* "Prolonged separation and isolation of family members lead to hardships and stress affecting both the migrants and the dependants left behind, which may give rise to social, psychological and health problems, and even affect workers' productivity. Therefore, family reunification should be facilitated. Even in the case of seasonal and special-purpose workers, countries should favourably consider allowing family migration or reunification."
* "Migrant workers and members of their families should not be subject to measures of arbitrary expulsion. Migrants who are the object of an expulsion order should enjoy due process of law in respect of the expulsion procedure. They should further have the right to claim unpaid wages, salaries, fees or other entitlements due to them."
On special protective measures for migrant workers recruited by private agents:
* "In order to prevent or eliminate fraudulent or abusive malpractices on the part of private agencies, both migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries should supervise the activities of private recruitment by means of appropriate national laws or regulations and in consultation with representative organizations of employers and workers. These laws or regulations should provide adequate sanctions against abuses or malpractices such as: forcing the migrant worker, upon arrival in the receiving country, to accept a contract of employment with conditions inferior to those contained in the contract which he or she signed prior to departure; withholding or confiscating passports or travel documents."
* "Both migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries should ensure that adequate machinery and procedures exist for the investigation, if necessary, of complaints concerning the activities of recruitment and placement services, involving, as appropriate, representatives of employers and workers."
* "Migrant-sending as well as migrant-receiving countries should encourage the self-regulation by private agents of their profession. Self-regulation should include the adoption by private agents of a code of practice to cover, inter alia, the principle that private agents should not knowingly recruit workers for jobs involving undue hazards or risks or where they may be subjected to abuse or discriminatory treatment of any kind; the principle that migrant workers are informed, as far as possible in their mother tongue or in a language with which they are familiar, of the terms and conditions of employment; and, maintaining a register of all migrants recruited or placed through them, to be available for inspection by the competent authority, provided that information so obtained is limited to matters directly concerned with recruitment and that in all instances the privacy of the workers and their families is respected."
Where widespread and persistent exploitative practices are known to the Office or brought to its attention by ILO constituents, the Meeting also urged the Director-General to inform the government concerned and solicit its observations on the matter, and inform the relevant Committee of the Governing Body with a view to proposing to the Government concerned that a pattern or practice study be carried out in the territory of the member State under whose jurisdiction the exploitation is viewed as occurring.