“The Catholic Church in Asia Cares for the Migrants in Taiwan”

March 16-19, 2007 - Wencui Center

Taipei, Taiwan.

Migration flows in Asia

specific focus on Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Mongolia,
Vietnam and Taiwan

Prepared by:

Kung,Yu-Chien Lorna

Scalabrini International Migration Network

Taiwan

1. Asian Migration as a Significant Phenomenon

The globalization and inequality of world economy has forced more and more workers to move across borders. By extrapolating the growth of the known migrant stocks from 1990 to 2000, the UN Population Division predicted that total migrants ranged from 185 to 192 million by early 2005. Among world population, one out of 35(or 3%) is of international migrant (UN, 2003).

The phenomenon is especially significant in Asia which supplies the most immigrants to other regions in the world. According to IOM's estimate, some 2.6 million Asian workers leave their countries every year, particularly from 1995 to1999, for employment contract, (IOM, 2005).

Table 1: Estimates of migrant stock by region - 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000

In million people

Source: United Nations International Migrant Stock 2002

In particular, international labor migration from and within Asia increased rapidly from 1970 onwards. Following a sharp increase in oil price in 1973, oil-producing countries in West Asia accelerated the intake of foreign workers who were initially employed for the construction of the needed infrastructure. Thailand, the Philippines, and later, Indonesia launched overseas employment programs to take advantage of the employment opportunities in the Gulf Region. Between mid-1970s and 1990s, the region's migrant stock quadrupled from approximately 2 million to some 8 million, with almost half of whom was employed by Saudi Arabia. In 1990, more than 40 percent of the population of the Gulf States (72% for the UAE) and more than two-thirds of the workforce in those states were foreign-born.

Source: United Nations 2002

In the 1980s, resulting from the rise of new industrialized countries (NICs) in East and Southeast Asia, interregional migration was accelerated. Workers from the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have turned more to neighboring destinations in East and Southeast Asia. Hong Kong and Singapore, which had long been the importers of migrant workers, as well as Japan, Malaysia, Korea and Taiwan, provided choices for unskilled workers, enabling more Asian migrants to get employed closer to home. The rise of intraregional migration in Asia is considered as part of the growing integration of the region's economy.

1.1 Demographic changes and i ncreased mobility lead to Asian migration.

Since 1970, the population of the region has been almost doubled. Yet it's noticed that the annual growth rate of the population has been almost halved over the same period. Due to a remarkable decline in fertility, the average number of children born had been more than halved from 5.4 in 1970 to 2.4 (Total fertility rates) in 2003. The average life expectancy of Asian men and wome n has increased by around 15 years over the same period. Hence, in 2000, Asian youth popul ation had reached 615 million but their proportion to the population declined to 18 percent. This of course creates an impact on labor migration since the youth group is the most mobile one.

In the last decade, not only the number of Asians moving between nations has seen increased, but the types of mobility have also become more complicated. The forces responsible for the increase in the movement are associated with globalization, increased levels of education, proliferation of international media, improved transportation systems and internationalization of business and labor markets.

Proliferation of social networks and many migrant agencies have contributed to the increase of Asians moving out of the region as well as between Asian countries.

1.2 The variety of Asia

All countries in the region are now influenced to some degree by international migration although the nature and level of that impact varies greatly.

•  As home to 57.7 percent of the world's population, Asia must be involved in any discus sion of global migration. Asia's vast size and cultural, ethnic, political, religious and economic complexity make it difficult to be generalized. In this region, there are China (1.3 billion), India (1.01 billion) and Indonesia (212 million), which are three of the world's four largest countries. In addition to some of the world's poorest nations, such as Nepal (US$1,310 Gross Domestic Product Per Capita in 2001), Bangladesh (US$1,610), there are also very wealthy nations such as Japan (US$25,130), Hong Kong (China) (US$24, 850) and Singapore (US$22,680).

•  Several countries are both significant exporters and importers of foreign labors (ex: Thailand and Malaysia). From a regional perspective, it is possible to identify Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand as source countries of both legal and irregular migration. With the exception of the Philippines, and to some extent, Thailand, most migrants from Indonesia and Vietnam move to more developed countries within the region (such as Taiwan). Among countries of destination, Taiwan recruits workers from the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia, Vietnam and Malaysia, while Malaysia recruits workers from Bangladesh, and Thailand recruits workers from Burma.

Table 2: Classification of Asian nations based on their international labor

migration situation

Source: Graeme Hugo, Migration in the Asia-Pacific region,2005

Huge variations from country to country and the dominated temporary migrants system in this region have led to increase in the amount and quality of data collection regarding Asia's migration phenomenon.

•  Country Highlights

The Philippines: Labor export becomes a government polic y

The Philippines is one of the largest and most organized migrant labor source countries in the world. A large number of Filipinos continue to permanently resettle abroad. As of December 2004, an estimated 9 million Filipinos — 10 percent of the country's 85 million people — were working and/or residing in nearly 200 countries.
In the last 30 years, a "culture of migration" has emerged, with millions of Filipinos eager to work abroad, despite the risks and vulnerabilities they are likely to face. A nationwide survey of 1,200 adult respondents in 2002 found one out of five Filipinos expressing their desire to migrate. The development of a culture of migration in the Philippines has been greatly aided by migration's institutionalization. The government facilitates migration and regulates operations of recruitment agencies. More importantly, the remittances workers send home have become a pillar to the country's economy. The absence of sustained economic development, political instability, growing population, double-digit unemployment rate and low wages continue to compel people to look abroad.

The majority of female OFWs are working in domestic and entertainment fields. Since these are unprotected sectors, it has raised many concerns about the safety and well-being of women migrants. Recruitment agencies charge migrant workers "placement fees" for services they provide. Manpower agencies are not supposed to charge placement fees, because the principal or employers are those who should be responsible for these fees. Yet, there are cases of violations.

Indonesia: one of the main labor exporting countries

Indonesia is a typical nation of labor surplus, and one of the world's major sources of unskilled migrant workers. In fact, the movement of laborers resulting from economic crisis has formed the most significant aspect of Indonesia's migration patterns and policies. These women are mainly employed as domestic workers, with a particularly large number employed in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Traffic between Indonesia and Malaysia is perhaps the world's second largest long-term undocumented migration flow, overshadowed only by that between Mexico and the United States. It is a movement whose history goes back to pre-colonial time and one that has reached very substantial levels in the last two decades. To begin with, the process of gaining appropriate document and permission to leave is time-consuming and requires many potential migrants to move away from home to major urban areas. They may have to wait for several months before being able to leave Indonesia. In addition, they are often charged exorbitant amount in this process. Furthermore, many of them are abused at the destination and also by recruiters at home. An amnesty in Peninsular Malaysia in 1993 saw some half a million Indonesian undocumented migrants come forward. In 1996, over 300,000 workers were legalized. Some 1.4 million Indonesians residing in Malaysia voted for their homeland's elections in 1997.

Estimated stocks of Indonesian overseas contract workers were 2,199,371 in 2000. A total of 1,069,406 Indonesian migrant workers were employed from 2001 through to 2003, with 293,694 migrant workers employed overseas in 2003 alone, sending home USD75,639,513 in remittances.

Thailand: a country of immigration and emigration

Thailand has been actively participating in the exchange of international investment, trade and tourism. This openness to other countries has also resulted in large flows of international migration, including that of refugees, displaced people as well as professional and labor migrants. These flows have been heightened through its affluence and stability when compared to neighboring countries. The number of foreign population residing and working in Thailand, by their immigration status, was estimated at 814,000 people who applied to the government for work permits by mid-December 2004. They are from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar

Saudi Arabia. Since 1995, however, the number of workers employed officially has fluctuated and declined, and about 85 percent of them now migrate to destinations in East and South-East Asia. Taiwan is by far the major destination of Thais migrating for employment, accounting for more than half of such workers going to that area. Recruitment and travel costs were high, with over 90 percent of the migrants paying at least 80,000 baht, while a quarter of them paying twice that amount. The key migration challenge for the government is irregular migration, including smuggling and trafficking in people and its impact on labor market and public health.

Vietnam: from asylum seekers to migrants

Vietnam's place in international migration is by far marked by the flow of refugees that began in the 1970s after the end of the war. A large number of refugees resettled in North America, Australia and Europe. With the repatriation of asylum seekers in Hong Kong and the closure of refugee camps in Southeast Asia, the outflow of Vietnamese refug ees can be conside red ended. As a result of large communities in countries of immigration and the right to petition for family reunification, permanent migration from Vietnam continues.
Vietnam had had a government-controlled labor export program since 1980 with the influence from the Soviet Union and countries that were part of the Soviet Union. Between 1980 and 1991, there were approximately 300,000 Vietnamese migrants working in such places. With the demise of the Soviet Union, new regulations were issued in 1991, allowing Vietnamese companies to export labors. The Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) reported that in 2002-2003, there were around 70,000 workers immigrating to Malaysia, 18,800 to South Korea and 8,100 to Japan, while 23,000 migrant workers went to Taiwan in 2003 alone. Migrant workers sent home approximately USD1.5 billion in 2003, with a large number of them from Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

Mongolia: a young labor-exporting country

The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union had led to a peaceful democratic revolution in Mongolia in 1990. The nation ended its transition from a communist state to a multi-party free-market democracy with the ratification of a new constitution in 1992.

In the early years of Mongolia's free market economy, migration from rural places to urban areas was dominant. Along with natural disasters, factors including insufficient quality of education and health services and lack of employment opportunities in rural areas, all led them to migrate. In the 2000 census, 491,806 people or 20.7 percent of the total population were covered in internal migration. In the past five years, 65 percent of migrants have settled in Ulaanbaatar , making up 14 percent of Ulaanbaatar 's population. The country, which only 16 years ago, used to screen anyone who was traveling abroad, has the most well-travelled people in the world today - some 30,000 Mongolians or 12.5 percent of the total population travel abroad each year.

Table.3 : Population, GDP, migrant stock and remittances of selected countries

Source: Migration News and Migration Information Center

Table.4: Foreign workers in Taiwan (end of November, 2006)

Source: Counsel of Labor Affair, Executive Yuan, Taiwan.

3. Five Distinctive Features in Asia Migration

3.1. Temporary guest worker is the dominated system

The largest international migrations influencing contemporary Asian countries are those involving largely non-permanent labor movements. With 1973's oil price increase and its associated massive demand for workers in the Middle East, South Asia's migrant workers had a long history of involvement in the Gulf area. But after 1973, the number had expanded rapidly and a large number of East and Southeast Asians also became involved. While workers in early years were mainly involved in infrastructure development, most of them now are unskilled and semi-skilled workers doing low paid, low status and so-called 3D(dirty, dangerous and difficult) jobs, and in more recent times moving mainly into service sector. An important trend over the last two decades however, is the growing demand for labor migrants in the so-called East Asian Tigers where economy grows rapidly.

A crucial question related to burgeoning labor migration impinging upon Asia is the extent to which migration will remain temporary. However, the policy makers in destination nations are conscious of the experience of guest workers in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s,in which temporary labor migration became a permanent settlement in 1970s and 1980s (Castles, Booth and Wallace ， 1984). There are signs that some Asian labor migrants are settling more or less permanently at their destinations(e.g. the Indonesians in Malaysia; Hugo 1995). However, most of the labor migration is emphatically circular and non-permanent migration is built in to the structure of economies and societies in both origins and destinations. Indeed, it may be that attempts by governments to impose greater border restrictions may force undocumented migrant workers who would prefer to circulate settling at the destination because of the danger of being detected during multiple crossing of the borders.

3.2 Both public and private sectors are involved in the recruitment of migrants

It is a more legally organized “industry”, both publicly and privately, than any other regions in the world, involving migration-promoting government programs, for example, the Philippines. There are innumerable legal and regulated migration brokers throughout the region. There is also a proliferation of national and trans-national recruitment agencies and networks even among the migrants. All these often add cost layers to getting a job abroad.

3.3 Female migrants are the majority

Asia is one of the world's greatest suppliers of female migrants who become domestic workers, not only elsewhere in Asia but other regions, especially in Middle East and Europe. Asian women already constitute the majority of migrant workers in several countries: one million Filipina, 500,000 Indonesian, and some 40,000 Thai women worked outside their countries in late 1990s, and the number has continued to increase (Wille and Passl (Eds.), 2001). Sin ce such work is happening in the homes of employers in the destination, it is giving to more exploitation opportunities than people working in a factory or other workplace. Stories of migrant workers not allowed to have a day-off, passports taken and kept by employers, and forgery and collusion between recruiters and employers, are not strange to female migrants.

Table .5: Selected Asian out-migration countries:

the proportion of international labor migrants who are women

International marriage

In Asia, international marriage migration is expected to become more and more important this decade. For example, the substantial scale of the phenomenon is indicated by the fact that in 2005, the proportion of international marriage was one fifth. It is apparent that the majority of such marriages are of Taiwanese men to foreign brides. A study of the movement (Hugo and Nguyen Thi ， 2004) had got the following findings:

1. The Vietnamese brides are drawn predominantly from poor areas of southern Vietnam.

2. There is a complicated system of marriage arrangement between two nations.

3. The grooms are predominantly from rural Taiwan.

Women migration and trafficking

The most significant issue raised these years is the trafficking of female migr ants . The topic of anti-trafficking of women and children has become an important global movement since 2000, after the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons was ratified. Over the past decade, trafficking of human beings has reached epidemic proportions. No country is immune. However, trafficking also raises some debates.

Most victims of trafficking are irregular female migrants and sex workers. The search for work abroad has been fuelled by economic disparity, high unemployment and disruption of traditional livelihoods. Unfortunately, some policy-makers use political implementations through strict border-control policy, resulting in anti-trafficking that becomes another anti-migrants policy. Combating trafficking should be directed towards empowering the trafficked women as migrants. They should avoid being stigmatized and victimized.

Migrant women should be accorded full legal status regardless of their marriage and professions. The States should improve their access to viable employment opportunities. Working conditions of women in the informal sector should be improved by guaranteeing their nation and international standards. Before practicing anti-trafficking implementations, it's necessary to further clarify such debates.

3.4 Irregular migration becomes an important, problematic issue.

The dominant policies dealing with migration in Asia does not allow permanent settlement and greatly restrict to nonpermanent migration. Nevertheless, the inequalities, differences and complementarities which have fuelled other flows between nations are impinging equally strongly upon people. Irregular migration becomes a response to the restrictive duration of working permits, exploitation of the broker system and bad labor conditions. However, almost all of the existing research and literature on patterns, causes and consequences of international migration are focused on considerations of legal, documented migrants, which is hardly surprising given the inherent difficulties in measuring details on irregular migration.

Malaysia and Thailand have the largest number of irregular migrants-- in Malaysia, government estimates put the number at 600,000, the target of the 2002 repatriations; in Thailand, some 600,000 Burmese workers were said to be in irregular situation(Asian Migration News, 15 January 2002). In 1996, Malaysia even started to build a 500 kilometers long wall along its northern borders with Thailand to stop illegal migrants. Given this scale, it is not surprising that irregular migration surfaces as a problematic issue for governments in this region.

There are different irregular migration flows in Asia: Peninsular Malaysia—Singapore, Brunei—Indonesia—Malaysia—Philippines and Burma—Thailand. The complexity of the illegal migration situation is increased by the fact that Asians also make up a significant undocumented flow outside of the country. This reflects the substantially higher wages available in Japan, Taiwan and Singapore than Malaysia, which are several times higher than those at home, despite the fact that so many jobs are available at home that they are being taken by foreigners(Kassim 1998).

Border controls have been reinforced over the past years to stop irregular entries, and crackdown, repatriations and amnesties have been implemented to reduce the population of irregular migrants. Employer sanctions are also attempted, but these are not sufficient in stopping the demand for migrant labor.

Battistela and Asis (2003) estimate that in the Southeast Asian region alone there are around 2 million irregular migrants. Undocumented and documented systems are not totally separated, although they are often portrayed as such. Usually undocumented flows are accompanied with documented flows. As some brokers and officials are involved in both types of movement, the networks established by documented migrants are often utilized by later undocumented migrants. In all cases, unauthorized status exposes them to the possibility of exploitation and prevents them from seeking the protection of the authorities at the destination. This can add to the marginalization experienced by many migrant groups.

3.5 Remittances become a major part of sending country's economy

In 2002, remittance receipts of developing countries amounted to

US$79 billion (IO M， 2005). An understanding of how these migrant and remittance flows affecting migrants' origin households is a core element in any assessment of how international migration affecting origin countries .

Asia is also the main source of the world's contract labor migrants. One of the major sending nations is the Philippines where according to the Central Bank of the Philippines measurement, formal flows of remittances had increased from US$1 billion in 1989 to US$5 billion in 1995 and to US$8.5 billion in 2004 (Migration News). A survey of Vietnamese in 1997-1998 found that 56.5 percent of respondents had relatives overseas and 48.1 percent reported receiving money from them (Lintne r， 2000). In 2002, official remittances reached US$2.4 billion(Far Eastern Economic Review, 26 October 2002 – 2 January 2003), double of $1.2 billion recorded in 1998(Asian Migration News,31 October 1999).

Remittances are a m ajor part of the economy of South Asian countries. Remittances can and do have an impact on the balance of payment s of nations. There is considerable concern in Asia (Athukorala 1993) that labor migration, in conjunction with remittances, can lead to so-called “Dutch disease”. The Dutch disease creates a condition of greater vulnerability to external shocks by stimulating imports and reducing the incentives to develop exports. Remittances from migrants and migrant workers within countries to their origin areas and from OCWs and expatriates to their home countries have been neglected phenomena in assessments of economic development in Asia. The reasons for this neglect are that most remittances have flowed through informal channels, so that the government has invested less within the country.

Figure.3 : Growth of Remittances to the

Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, 1980-2003

Source: Graeme Hugo, Migration in the Asia-Pacific region,2005

4. Asian Models of Migration: Exclusionary principles

Accordingly, the Asian models of migration can be summarized as follow s ：

1. Almost all Asian nations continue to deny permanent settlement of immigrants.

There is a high degree of exclusion:

-- not allowed to bring family with them

-- restricted in the jobs they can hold

-- can't travel freely in the country

-- don't have access to basic workers rights

-- subjected to compulsory health tests such as HIV testing

-- do not have the channel to approach employers

-- cannot marry local people

-- do not have access to citizenship

Nevertheless, the exclusionary principles remain dominant and become the prevailing public attitude supported by media and government.

2. There is substantial irregular migration in response to the needs for workers and the strict control system.

3. There is a high degree of stigmatization and stereotyping of migrants

4. There are many issues spawned by contemporary Asian migration. One of these is the problem of commodification . It is there not only in how the migrants are exploited by their recruiters and employers but in the way their governments systematically make “national exports” out of them.

The volume of migration relative to population is generally lower in Asia than in western countries and policy settings differ. Important factors in turning temporary migration into settlement in western countries included strong legal and human rights guaranties, which facilitated family reunion and hindered large-scale deportations in 1970s and 1980s. Since temporary labor migration is a very common migration system in Asia , migrants admitted as permanent settlers and enjoying wide protection is rarely seen in this region. Migration from and within Asia was a new phenomenon which grew rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s. Except for Asia, all major regions in the world have their version of human rights instruments: the European Convention on Human Rights(1950), the American Convention on Human Rights(1969), the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights(1981) and the Arab Charter on Human Rights(1994). Few Asian countries have ratified the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families . Perhaps the absence of human rights approach will be the key reason for Taiwan and Asian countries to show more resistance than European system to settlement migration and to the protection of migrants. Nevertheless, there are important steps that need to be taken by Taiwan and other Asian countries under such direction.

5. A New Era of Migration --- Collective Approach to Migrants' Rights

Undoubtedly, one of the areas of most concern related to international labor migration in Asia is the abuse and exploitation of many migrant workers, and improving the protection of the human rights of OCWs must be a priority. Migrants should be made fully aware of their rights, entitlements and obligations through pre-departure training programs and employers should be informed of their obligations towards migrant employees. More positive aspects should be considered, such as: the contribution of workers to the national economy; the fact that most migrant workers wish to maintain strong contact with their home areas and to return to their home country; the social and cultural benefits of multicultural societies etc. Local and international human rights organizations and civil society organizations could play a particularly important role in that regard.

Effective management of migration is very much dependent on international co-operation, bilateral, regional and multilateral. It is important to promote dialogue and explore opportunities for greater regional co-operation on matters pertaining to population movements including migrants. The development of regional economic blocs such as NAFTA and the EU, has seen massive shifts which have facilitated regional flows of investment, trade and finance but initiatives regarding flow of people have been fewer. In Asia the global trend toward regional organization development and regional co-operation is eviden t in the development of organizations like APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) and ASEAN(Association of South East Asian Nations) which have now been in existence for more than a decade. However, little has been achieved with respect to regional agreement on international migration issues.

The transaction costs of migration, which are predominantly borne by migrant workers themselves, will not be reduced without state's intervention. Such intervention will necessitate close cooperation between origin and destination country governments. It is, however, proving difficult to get pairs of Asian origin and destination countries together to discuss migration issues which mutually influence them both. Indeed, it has been difficult to get ‘labor exporting' nations together to agree on minimum standards and workers rights etc. There is an array of international instruments available which, if accepted by all nations, would provide a framework for international labor migration to operate more efficiently, effectively and justly. In particular, the UN Convention on Migrant Workers (ICPRAMWF) of 1990 and finally ratified by the General Assembly in 2002 would be the basis for improving Asian international labor migration system. Unfortunately, it has not been ratified by most Asian nations and the destination countries for Asian migrants.

In Asia alone, increasing numbers of women are leaving behind families and loved ones every year to work as domestic workers in other countries. Unfortunately for this type of workers, there is still no agreed definition despite the urgency of such a definition for the purpose of obtaining a legal recognition of domestic workers as workers. There are some positive trends in this region. Asian nations, with a few exceptions, have extremely restrictive citizenship policies, which make it very difficult for immigrants to obtain citizenship, at least legally. In recent years, however, there has been a substantial increase in the n umber of Asian countries recognizing dual citizenship or dual nationality (Vertove c， 1999 ). This has been a function of the growing recognition of the benefits to be derived from maintaining strong linkages with their expatriates. Hence, the Philippine Congress passed the Dual Citizenship law in 2003 and in 2005 Indians extended Dual Citizenship rights to all overseas Indians (Asian Migration News, 1-15 January 2005). In addition, the Philippines also enacted legislation in 2003 that granted suffrage to overseas Filipinos, enabling them to vote for the first time in national election in 2004.

As Castles (2003) argues, there is a need for the elites of many Asian nations to make a “conceptual leap” with respect to international migration policy involving in part the recognition of the long term significance of migration and settlement in the region. As he correctly states, the conceptual leap… “is not likely to happen quickly, but the human costs of delay may be high”.

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