Magazine Issue 7 - Spring 1998
Migrant Labour pays the price of Asian crisis

By Natacha David, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions

The financial tornado devastating Asia's economies has found an easy target: migrant workers from neighbouring countries. Be~ause of the economic downswing. millions of migrant workers are being forced to leave their host countries to free up jobs for real' citizens. Their return will further weaken the struggling economies of their own countries.

The Thai government plans to repatriate 300,000 to 500,000 foreign workers this year, mainly from Malaysia, southern Asia and Indochina. Among the migrants who will have to leave the country are tens of thousands of Burmese workers, whose return will be even more difficult than most. Many belong to ethnic minorities who face harassment, if not imprisonment and torture, in Burma.

In Malaysia, thanks to the economic crisis, many development projects have been suspended. As a result, the government has announced that it will expel one million immigrant workers, or half the country's registered foreign workforce, to free up jobs for its own citizens.

Most of these migrants come from Indonesi Bangladesh, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India.

If Malaysia puts its intentions mt practice, Indonesia, hard hit by drought an the region's economic crisis, will suffer bad from the forced return of its migrant Bangladesh, which exports more than on million workers each year, mainly t Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, als fears the forced return of its expatriates.

In South Korea, there are already som10,000 Bangladeshis targeted for expulsior 250,000 Bangladeshis working in Malaysi face the same fate.

Emigration is an important source c income for Bangladesh. Between January an November 1997, emigrants repatriated som 1.4 billion dollars to the country. All thes labour exporting countries were aIread heavily dependent on the currency revenu from their emigrants before the crisis. Nov this income is even more important. As result, competition for jobs on the region and international labour market is becomin fierce, to the detriment of migrants' workin conditions and salaries.