From Cheap Labor to Economic Burden

Just as life was getting really desperate, a man came to Prasert Kingsaklang’s village. He went door to door telling villagers about well-paid construction jobs in Singapore and Kuwait and other exotic places.

Prasert, 40, whose tiny rice farm had failed because of drought and whose wife made only a pittance selling noodles, knew friends who had gone abroad to work. They always came back with enough money to buy a small farm machine or build a house. Prasert listened carefully to the man, asking only about the salary and the cost of living abroad.

That night, he gathered his family around him, saying: “I do not want to leave, but I must go. I have no choice.” His wife replied: “That’s right. You have no choice.”

Thus did Prasert, a peasant with two children, a fourth-grade education and no applicable skills, join the legion of perhaps 8 million Southeast Asian migrant workers who float from country to country the world over, often without visas, chasing yen and ringgit and dinars and opportunities they cannot find at home.

For years, these laborers earned the grudging respect of more prosperous Asians. Their sweat and muscle built the palaces of Saudi Arabia, the roads of Singapore, the high-rises of Indonesia, the factories of Thailand. They did the jobs that Thais call “the 3 Ds”--dirty, dangerous and difficult. They also cleaned urinals, cared for children of the wealthy, swept streets.

But when Asia slid into economic crisis last summer, the mood changed. Treated as second-class citizens even in the best of times, the migrant workers increasingly are seen as an economic burden. They are a luxury that host countries can no longer afford, critics say; they take precious jobs, strain social services and--with religions, lifestyles and customs that are often alien--challenge the cultural fiber of these nations.

“Let’s just kick them out,” a reader wrote to the South China Morning Post, referring to Hong Kong’s 100,000 Philippine maids. “They are not here from the kindness of their hearts, but to dig for gold.”

When Malaysia announced a plan--which was later abandoned--to send home about 2 million migrant workers, mostly Indonesians, the New Straits Times editorialized: “Malaysians will no doubt support such a policy, for clearly we are now in the throes of being swamped by foreign workers, bringing with them social, economic, political and security problems for the country.”

Although Malaysia backed off from its plan to expel the migrant workers, it has joined several other countries in rounding up illegal immigrants. Countries in the Middle East have sent home Indonesian laborers. South Korea has sent home Vietnamese. Thailand has said it will start deporting 300,000 Burmese, Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese by June. Malaysia and Singapore have tried to reduce their numbers of foreign maids by placing a heavy government levy on citizens who hire one.

Southeast Asia’s most valuable resource has long been cheap labor. The workers began to leave home in the 1970s, when construction boomed in the Middle East, and the movement continued into the ‘90s as Asia’s economic “miracle” transformed tattered cities into gleaming canyons of skyscrapers.

Asia’s economic boom created a huge demand for unskilled labor, particularly in countries such as Malaysia that traditionally have enjoyed nearly full employment. In Singapore, economic growth has created 100,000 new jobs annually; at the same time, only 50,000 Singaporeans have entered the job market each year.

Economic opportunities abroad--and a lack of them at home--have sent 3 million Filipinos overseas. In tiny, oil-rich Brunei (population 300,000) one in three residents is a foreign worker. Singapore is host to 500,000 foreigners. About 50,000 Vietnamese have left their homeland to seek menial jobs abroad. Cambodians and Laotians by the thousands are also on the move.

For countries that export labor, the money that workers send home--which then trickles into the economy--represents an important source of foreign exchange: $2.5 billion a year for Indonesia, more than $1 billion annually for the Philippines, $200 million for Thailand, $100 million for Vietnam.

The thought of these workers being expelled because of the regional economic crisis is an unsettling one, with serious ramifications for the home countries of the laborers. Already beset by growing unemployment, they would have no means to absorb hundreds of thousands of unskilled, jobless returnees.

“Regardless of what the economic situation is today, countries are still going to need Thai workers,” said Suma Kongmanusorn, chief of labor for the Thai government department that promotes the use of the country’s workers abroad.

In anticipation of an eventual upturn in their economies, Thailand and Vietnam, in fact, are taking steps to increase the number of workers they send abroad, with Vietnam hoping to double to 100,000 its expatriate workers by 2000. Both countries are setting up skill-development centers to make their workers more employable and are offering advice so that prospective migrants are less likely to be cheated by unscrupulous recruiters and agents.

Ramiyata Kasmuri, a 22-year-old maid, worked for two years in Malaysia, all the time believing that the agent who had recruited her was sending her $100-a-month salary to her parents in Indonesia. When the contract expired, she discovered that her parents had received nothing and that the agent was nowhere to be found. The Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, reported 150 similar complaints last year.

“Migrant workers have contributed . . . greatly to making Asia the fastest-growing region in the world,” Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos said in 1995. “Yet recognition of their rights and promotion of their welfare have been slow in coming.”

Philippine maids, for example, were traditionally treated so badly in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that for nine years the government in Manila prohibited citizens from taking such jobs. The ban was lifted in October as unemployment grew in the Philippines.

A Philippine maid, Lucio Nikin, was executed for murder in Saudi Arabia last month. And the hanging of another Philippine maid, Flor Contemplacion, also on a murder charge, in Singapore two years ago sparked a battle cry--”Remember Flor!”--still used by overseas contract workers and activist groups.

In another case, the parents of an Indonesian woman, Soleha Anam Kadiran, tried to locate their daughter through the agent who had sent her to Saudi Arabia. They were told that she had been beheaded for murder.

“I have heard those stories, but I cannot complain about my treatment here at all,” said Andreas Djalal, an Indonesian migrant in Kuala Lumpur. And as long as workers abide by the law and do not overstay their contract, most have few problems. But it is clearly understood that they are seen as second-class citizens.

Singapore requires foreign workers to pledge that they will not marry a Singaporean. Almost everywhere, workers must surrender their passports while in the host country.

Still, the indignities are worth it to many migrant workers who have used jobs abroad as a means to join the middle class at home. In Manila, 40-year-old Leonardo Malinis guides his 10-seat taxi--bought with savings from three years in Kuwait--through the streets and says he is feeling quite secure these days. He grosses the equivalent of $40 a day, is sending two children through college, has a 25-inch color television and owns a small home.

“Was it worth it?” he asks. “Oh, yes. I am one of the lucky ones.”

Hanoi Bureau chief Lamb was recently on assignment in Bangkok.