Laws: April, 2003 - Number #17

Philippines. The Philippines has been called the world's largest exporter of skilled labor, according to Bernardo Villegas, dean of the University of Asia and the Pacific, "supplying nurses, teachers, techies and sailors to the global village." About 80 percent of Filipino nurses are working abroad.

Villegas said in February 2003 that the Philippines has surpassed Mexico as a chief source of migrant workers for the world. Villegas said migrants "will be the focus of the Philippine economy at least for the next 100 years." An estimated seven percent of Filipino families receive remittances from abroad.

There have been frequent kidnappings for ransom of ethnic Chinese in Manila, but the kidnappers have begun to target non-Chinese Filipinos as well. The Philippine president has declared war on kidnapping syndicates and ordered the national police to root them out by summer 2003.

Malaysia. The Malaysian government instituted a new lifetime ban on employers who physically abuse foreign maids. Employers who fail to pay the salary to their maids will be barred from employing foreign maids for one or two years. In 2002, five Kuala Lumpur-based employers were blacklisted for mistreating their maids, who complained of non-payment of salary and verbal, emotional and physical abuse.

The Home Ministry announced that future police operations against suspected illegal immigrants must involve officers from the Immigration Department, so as to prevent a repeat of a March 9, 2003 incident in which Indian IT professionals with valid documents were arrested.

Indonesia. The government suspended unskilled female worker emigration in March 2003 for two to three months, arguing that unskilled workers lack language and work skills to deal with foreign employers, contributing to their poor treatment abroad. Indonesia wants labor recruiters to provide language and other classes to prospective migrants before they leave, and may establish minimum wages and working conditions for the contracts migrants are supposed to have in hand when they go abroad.

Indonesia's Parliament said it would be better to close the emigration gates rather than to allow "our women" to be abused abroad. In 2002, some 200,000 Indonesians were sent legally to Saudi Arabia and 155,000 to Malaysia. Indonesia estimates that 1.9 million Indonesians are at work in Malaysia, most illegally.

Cambodia. A Thai soap opera star in January 2003 reportedly insulted the Cambodian people by asserting that the ancient temple of Angkor Wat belongs to Thailand; Angkor Wat was once the center of the Khmer Empire, which ruled much of Southeast Asia. Cambodians, squeezed between two bigger, more powerful neighbors, Thailand and Vietnam, often have an inferiority complex vis-a-vis their neighbors.

In response to riots that destroyed $47 million in Thai property in Phnom Penh, Thailand closed its borders to Cambodians, and began to round up and deport Cambodian workers in Thailand.

Under a March 2002 agreement, the US is returning 1,400 Cambodians convicted of crimes in the US, or about 10 a month for the next decade. Most of the returnees left as small children in 1979 and 1980 and have no memory of Cambodia; many were convicted of crimes in Southern California gang wars.

Critics worry that the US is exporting criminals and gang battles to a country that is still recovering from three decades of nearly continuous warfare. The Communist leader Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge slaughtered more than a million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979, and greatly reduced the number of educated Cambodians- 65 percent of adults are illiterate.

Sa'Odah Elias, "Immigration officers to join ops," Malaysian Star, March 26, 2003. "Thailand rounds up illegal Cambodian workers," Japan Economic Newswire, March 12, 2003.