Abu Dhabi’s Potemkin Village

It’s not a labour camp, it’s the “Saadiyat Accommodation Village” 7,500 men (eventually to house 20,000) from the poorest countries of southern Asia – from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines – live and sleep in apparently Utopian comfort when they are not labouring under the Gulf sun on the cultural dream projects of Abu Dhabi’s rulers: the Louvre Museum and the Guggenheim, and the vast emporium built to hold the art treasures of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan at the Zayed National Museum.

There is a sports field, a laundry service, a chess corner, a tea shop, a table-tennis room, a fresh fruit and grocery store, a mobile phone shop, an outside cash dispenser and money-transfer system through which workers can send home 100 per cent of their earnings (wages are issued electronically), basketball, volleyball fields and an outdoor cinema. There are television rooms to watch programmes in Urdu, Pushtu, Hindi, Bengali and English., special menus  offering “South India” food, “North India” food, Bengali food, Arabic food, and Philippine food. The dormitories are spotlessly clean rooms with six beds, four beds, two beds, one bed – the size of your room depends where you are in the pecking order of contractors’ expertise – and air conditioning, free internet and Skype. There’s health insurance.

But there are more than four million foreign workers in the seven wealthy Emirates – well over two million of them in Abu Dhabi. But labourers can spend four years in the Emirates without once seeing their families – there are no visas for wives or children to visit them. And it’s the contractors who pay the workers – not the UAE. The three massive labour camps in Dubai, at Senaful, al-Quoz and Jebel Ali are no Saadiyats. They are three or four-storey concrete blocks that look more like penitentiaries than villages, a bleak and grassless wasteland in which tens of thousands of workers sleep together, sometimes 14 to a room. There are no books, no sports fields, no entertainment, sometimes no air conditioning. There are locks on the gates and each block has a “guard” – as they are called by the contracting companies. On-site contractor managers have business cards in English which actually state their employment as “Camp Boss”.

The Canadians and Americans used the poor of China to build their trans-Canadian railroad in the 19th century. The English used the Irish to lay the rail tracks and dig the Tube tunnels of London. But this is the 21st century and it is little different.

Adapted from here

The Price of your Summer Holidays

More than one million foreigners travelled to the Maldives last year. There are over 58,000 migrant workers in the Maldives, of whom more than a third worked on luxury resorts. A US government report has said the number of “documented and undocumented” foreign workers in Maldives could be as high as 200,000. Most are from India and Bangladesh.

Ahmed Tholal, vice-president of the the Maldives’ human rights commission, said there has been a recent spate of attacks of “hate crimes” and there was a background of entrenched discrimination and “inhuman treatment” of migrant workers in the Maldives, who he said “make an immense contribution to the economy” but had no one to defend them. Two men from Bangladesh have died from injuries in the last week. One migrant worker from Bangladesh, who said he would attend the protest despite the ban, said the community was “afraid to go out on the streets, they are stabbing us, beating us”. The US state department’s Trafficking in Persons report last year claimed that migrant workers suffered forced labour, confiscation of identity and travel documents, withholding or nonpayment of wages, and debt bondage. The report criticised local authorities for failing to “fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.”

Immigrant have been told they will be ordered to leave the island nation if they go ahead with a planned protest against alleged discrimination and violence. Mohamed Anwar, the controller of immigration and emigration, said any protest by migrant workers would breach the terms of their work permits, and participants’ visas would be cancelled without further warning. “The immigration department will not hesitate in penalising those who participate in protests,” Anwar said. On Thursday the economic ministry repeated the threat. “We believe the planned protest by migrant workers is a premeditated attempt to undermine the Maldivian economy and businesses,” it said.

Marouf Zaki, of the Tourism Employees Association of Maldives, said: “The current migrant workforce is very important for the economy but is facing a very worse situation. We are calling for a peaceful demonstration. We believe they have full rights to do that. To protest is a universal right.”

Ahmed Tholal said the country’s constitution guaranteed anyone on Maldivian soil the right to protest. “A clause in a migrant worker’s contract cannot override the constitution,”

But we arer the same the world over

It is all too easy to blame immigrants for causing problems such as unemployment, bad housing or crime. Whether it is Eastern Europeans or Asians, a finger can always be pointed at ‘them’ for making things worse for ‘us’. It is often objected that immigrants come in order to claim benefits and live off the backs of ‘locals'. But there is no reason to think this is true in the vast majority of cases since benefits are low, and most migrants are not entitled to them anyway plus the migration journey can be expensive and arduous, sometimes fatal, with many dying suffocating in containers. Many 'natives' cannot contain their indignation that immigrants should try to come here at all and talk about immigration undermining 'indigenous' culture is so much hogwash. A nation is not something natural but an artificial idea that has been constructed over the centuries, based on accidents of geography and history. From fish and chips to curry and pizza, food in Britain is a mixture just as much as the inhabitants of these islands are. Without the constant propaganda against "foreigners", where would "nationalist" feeling come from? Such feelings are not inborn. Small children are not hostile to other children with different-coloured skin, any more than they are to those with different-coloured hair, or different-coloured shoes. Why should they be? Those travelling long distances through fear or desperation are people no different to ourselves.

Migrants are rarely well off in the country they move to, forming an underclass with little if any security of employment or housing. Immigrants often receive low paying work in the service industry ( the 3-D jobs, dirty dangerous and difficult), once they enter the developed capitalist system and they can never afford the education to gain higher paying jobs. As a result they stay in the service industry their entire lives, being some of the most lowly-paid members of the working class of wage and salary earners.The immigrants who now try to settle in Britain come at the bottom of the social scale, taking the worst houses, accepting the worst conditions. Likely to be of more importance is the perception (rightly or wrongly) that Britain is a fair and open society and the desire to be with family and friends already in the UK. Such primary reasons stem largely from the foreign policy of the UK government, in presenting itself as a bastion of the free world whilst simultaneously exerting links over far-flung lands. It is taught in school that capitalist countries are mosaic countries, small units of various cultures existing within a larger schema or government. This view is marketed so that potential immigrants will not have to leave their customs behind and still be able to reap the so-called rewards of capitalist society. Yet only those who assimilate into the capitalist system are able to experience the "freedoms" it promises, often at the cost to their own culture.

While it is true that the decision to economically migrate is not taken solely on labour market factors, and the nature of the political regime and the historic links may well have a strong determining role, nevertheless the demand for labour to be attracted to concentrated areas is a structural feature of capitalism. Since its inception, capitalism has drawn workers into highly concentrated areas of development in order to satisfy its labour needs. All those people seeking migration are simply obeying the imperative that they must try to find a place to work; and no amount of government restrictions will change that fact. Hence, migrants with even a smattering of English, and a desire to work for a bearable living standard or to pay off debts to people-traffickers, choose countries like Britain.

No ruling class is ever completely unanimous. Capitalism creates conflicts within each ruling class; no two capitalists have interests which are exactly the same. The question of immigration causes disputes within the British ruling class. Some want to establish the principle that when a particular industry or trade is short of workers, its owners have the right to bring in workers from any other country, and thus help to counteract the danger of having to raise wages and salaries. Some other members of the capitalist class feel it would be a mistake to let in too many workers from other countries. Some members of the capitalist class take advantage of any "foreign" immigration to whip up nationalist feeling, using the perception among workers (who have the votes) that there is some threat to themselves from competitors from overseas. Those who are in possession of little are easily frightened by the threat of some other coming to take it away. The appearance of jobs going to these “foreigners” whilst their “own” go without work reinforces the illusion that migration causes unemployment. World socialists have argued that racism is usually fuelled and ignited by poverty and fear, and therefore cannot be removed until the cause is.

So while many of those seeking to enter the UK might be well-qualified machine operators, engineers, builders, doctors etc (as they are), if the capitalist economy is going through yet another of its inevitable cyclical crises, there'll be no employers or money to pay for these much-needed workers. Such economic crises make migrants unwanted. They put politicians under maximum pressure to keep them out to minimise state expenditure, spending which reduces the nation's profitability the bigger it gets, and is especially disliked when making profits is then as difficult as it gets. Increased racism and nationalism also become more likely as high unemployment and poverty produce considerable social suffering, provoking the pained to find and lash out at those they think responsible, and politicians in need of scapegoats, chauvinistic bigots and money-mad tabloids all eager to point some out.

The problems we face are not caused by workers from other parts of the world migrating to this part, but by the capitalist system of class ownership and production for profit instead of the common ownership and production geared to satisfying people's needs which will be the case in socialism. The socialist response is simply to point out that poverty and social disruption are caused by capitalism, a social system which requires the vast majority of the population to rely on selling their labour power to survive. With or without immigration there will be unemployment, homelessness, crime. What an extraordinary notion it is that so many members of the human race should be forced to remain on that small section of the earth's surface in which they happened to be born. Who gave the world's rulers the right to tell us which bit of land we should live on? How much longer are we willing to sit around and let a tiny minority divide us? Socialists understand that the thing which makes workers leave behind their communities, and go to a place where their language is not spoken, is the wages system itself, which swats humans around the globe like a kitten playing with its toys. This underlies the need for us to recognise our identical position with regards to the wages system, and work together, as workers across the world, across boundaries, to create a commonly owned planet where all can live in security.What socialists envisage is that when the resources of the Earth have become the common heritage of all the human race then the world would no longer be divided into separate states, and people would be free to travel anyway in the world without needing a passport or visa and whether to live or to work or simply for pleasure.

Unique amongst all political parties, left or right, the Socialist Party has no national axe to grind. We side with no particular state or government. We have no time for border controls. The world over, workers must do what they can individually and collectively to survive and resist capitalism. In many parts of the world that means escaping political tyranny or economic poverty. Workers should try and resist taking sides. We must not blame another worker for our poverty.

immigration

Britons are more fearful about immigration than many other nations.

Almost one in four (23%) said immigration was the most important issue facing the country. The other countries, including the US (9%), Canada (5%), France (8%), Germany (9%), Italy (10%), Holland (4%) and Spain (3%), appeared far less concerned. The survey also found 59% of Britons agreed there were "too many" people living in the country who were not born here, also a much higher figure than the other nations. 47% believed legal immigrants were a burden on social services like schools and hospitals, and 33% said legal immigrants increase crime. About one in four (22%) said only British citizens should have access to UK schools and 25% said only British citizens should have access to healthcare.

However, the survey also showed that 77% of people agreed legal immigrants were hard workers, and 43% said they were integrating well or very well into society - a higher figure than several of the other nations.

Whether Polish plumbers or Chinese cockle-pickers, migrant labour in the UK is undoubtedly higher profile now than it has been for many decades. Should we be surprised by such findings when politicians ever ready to seek the votes of Little-Englanders often speak about the problem of immigrants from abroad coming to this country and causing problems such as housing, medical care and education. The problems facing working people and their families are not caused by immigration or immigrants and will not be solved by the Fortress Britain or a policy of "British Jobs for British Workers". They are caused by capitalism. We face manipulations, lies and exaggerations from the media accounts of immigration and asylum seekers, e.g. in the Thatcher era, with immigrants making up 4 percent of the population, she gave her vision of what made Britain 'Great' – 9 percent felt there were too many immigrants before she expounded compared with 21 percent who admitted to being worried afterwards. The actual state of monetary and housing benefits to immigrants are wildly different from the stories abounding in the media. The estimate of a £200m expense for so-called “health tourism” turned out to be unsupportable, and the real cost is probably far less. Most desperately poor and sick people capable of scraping together the cost of reaching Britain would spend this trying to get well close to home. And with a NHS budget of almost £70bn, the true cost of transnational healthcare pay-avoidance must be comparatively trivial.

The capitalist system is marketed on its promises of equality and freedoms through purchasing power. Prospective immigrants are given rhetoric about how capitalism makes anything possible – if one has money. It is taught in school that capitalist countries are mosaic countries, small units of various cultures co-existing alongside. This view is marketed so that potential immigrants will not have to leave their customs behind and still be able to reap the so-called rewards of capitalist society. In reality, what exists is a melting pot where these cultures are eventually assimilated. The opposite of a mosaic, melting pot, a term with a negative connotation, is often used to describe societies experiencing large-scale immigration from many different countries that seem to “melt” into the existing society. For example, Muslims are being assimilated into Western culture by way of developed capitalism. Only those who assimilate into the capitalist system are able to experience the "freedoms" it promises, but at often cost to their culture. It follows that people who come to developed capitalist countries work to serve the needs of the majority, who are of a different culture, often by forgoing their own so that they might fit in the prevailing market-driven norms. The immigrants who now try to settle in Britain come at the bottom of the social scale, taking the worst houses, accepting the worst conditions. Yet many publicists cannot contain their indignation that they should try to come here at all.

Capitalism needs a reserve army of unemployed, to exert a downward pressure on wages as well as a source of readily-available extra labour-power that can be called upon during the expansion phase of the capitalist economic cycle. The problem for the capitalist class is a potential labour shortage threatens the growth of the economy. However, a labour shortage puts the working class in a strong position and clearly the employers wish to counteract this. All things being equal, a labour shortage causes wages to rise and thus puts workers in a comparatively stronger bargaining position vis à vis overall working conditions. Naturally, our masters will always seek to counteract such a situation by importing (often cheaper, more compliant) workers, which in turn intensifies competition among workers, potentially fermenting xenophobia and racism. This can lead to the government actively recruiting labour from overseas to bridge the gap. Some economists have pointed out that such a policy is likely to put intolerable pressure on public and private housing in terms of provision and surging house prices . In some parts of the UK the influx may well have resulted in increased unemployment for existing workers and appears to be putting a downward pressure on wages in some sectors. For workers fighting over crumbs in lower wage unskilled jobs, the temptation to blame your unemployment or wage level on foreign labour may be strong. But nevertheless such views are false. The blame lies elsewhere. In order to stay profitable, UK employers are demanding cheap labour. In the nineteenth century, capitalists in Britain welcomed many thousands of Irish immigrants, in the belief that they would keep wages down. So some English or Scottish workers may have felt that their pay was less than it might have been, without the competition from these Irish newcomers. From this point of view, then, immigration might be a minus for British workers.

Now the capitalist economy is going through yet another of its inevitable cyclical crises and such economic crises make migrants unwanted. They put politicians under maximum pressure to keep them out to minimise state expenditure

We must not blame another worker for our poverty, whether migrant or not, whether illegal or legal.Those travelling long distances through fear or desperation are people no different to ourselves. Instead of falling for the divide and rule tactics which weaken us all, workers should recognise who their real enemy is and work together to defeat the system that enslaves us all.

Another immigration myth debunked

There is no evidence that new migrants are jumping the queue for council and housing association homes to the detriment of any other group, including white families, according to new research.

The study shows that out of the 10.1 million council and housing association tenants in Britain, 9 million are UK-born and just over 1 million were born outside the country. It adds that only 183,300 - less than 2% - of tenants arrived in Britain in the last five years and most of the 1 million are long-settled migrants who have been here for years and may have become British citizens.
The analysis of housing for new migrants to the UK who have arrived over the last five years, including those from Poland and other east European countries, shows 60% living in private rented accommodation, 18% owner-occupiers and only 11% allocated to social housing.

Most new migrants in the past five years, particularly those from the eight east European countries which joined the EU in 2004, are not eligible for social housing unless they have been resident in the UK and in work for at least 12 months. Any application they make must meet the same criteria of need as UK-born applicants. According to the latest figures for 170,263 lettings in the social housing sector in 2006-07 in England, where the nationality of the named tenant was collected, less than 5% went to foreign nationals and less than 1% went to new migrants from eastern Europe.

A poll of 66 housing managers across Britain, of whom 74% said they believed that migrants had "not very much" or "no" impact on increased demand for housing in the social rented sector, while 66% said they had increased pressure on private rented accommodation.

The REAL Illegal Immigration problem

The front page story of the Independent is featuring three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom. When they found sanctuary one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wrists swollen. The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but mistreated and forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had to pay for sub-standard food. If they took a shower with a garden hose or bucket, it cost them $5.

A week after the escapees managed to emerge from the van in which they had been locked up for the night, police discovered that a forced labour operation was supplying fruit-pickers to local growers. Court papers describe how migrant workers were forced into debt and beaten into going to work on farms in Florida, as well as in North and South Carolina. Detectives found another 11 men who were being kept against their will in the grounds of a Florida house .The men had to pay to live in the back of vans and for food. Their entire pay cheques went to the Navarettes and they were still in debt. They slept in decrepit sheds and vehicles in a yard littered with rubbish. When one man did not want to go to work because he was sick, he was allegedly pushed and kicked .
The complaint reveals that the men were forced to pay rent of $20 (£10) a week to sleep in a locked furniture van where they had no option but to urinate and defecate in a corner. They had to pay $50 a week for meals – mostly rice and beans with meat perhaps twice a week if they were lucky. The fruit-pickers' caravans, which they share with up to 15 other men, rent for $2,400 a month – more per square foot than a New York apartment .

Their story of slavery and abuse in the fruit fields of sub-tropical Florida threatens to lift the lid on some appalling human rights abuses in America today.

Between December and May, Florida produces virtually the entire US crop of field-grown fresh tomatoes. Fruit picked here in the winter months ends up on the shelves of supermarkets and is also served in the country's top restaurants and in tens of thousands of fast-food outlets. But conditions in the state's fruit-picking industry range from straightforward exploitation to forced labour. Tens of thousands of men, women and children – excluded from the protection of America's employment laws and banned from unionising – work their fingers to the bone for rates of pay which have hardly budged in 30 years.

Fruit-pickers, who typically earn about $200 (£100) a week, are part of an unregulated system designed to keep food prices low and the plates of America's overweight families piled high. The migrants, largely Hispanic and with many of them from Mexico, are the last wretched link in a long chain of exploitation and abuse. They are paid 45 cents (22p) for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes collected. A worker has to pick nearly two-and-a-half tons of tomatoes – a near impossibility – in order to reach minimum wage. So bad are their working and living conditions that the US Department of Labour, which is not known for its sympathy to the underdog, has called it "a labour force in considerable distress". Florida has a long history of exploiting migrant workers. Farm labourers have no protection under US law and can be fired at will.

A campaign has been under way to improve the workers' conditions. After years of talks, a scheme to pay the tomato pickers a penny extra per pound has been signed off by McDonald's, the world's biggest restaurant chain, and by Yum!, which owns 35,000 restaurants including KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. But Burger King, which also buys its tomatoes in Immokalee, has so far refused to participate, threatening the entire scheme.

Burger King will not pay the extra penny a pound that the tomato-pickers are demanding he said. "If we agreed to the penny per pound, Burger King would pay about $250,000 annually, or $100 per worker. How does that solve exploitation and poverty?" the vice-president of Burger King asked. Indeed it would not but improved wages could ameliorate their condition a little .

Whole Foods Market, which recently expanded into Britain with a store in London's upmarket suburb of Kensington, has been discovered stocking tomatoes from one of the most notorious Florida sweatshop producers. Whole Foods ignored an appeal by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to pay an extra penny a pound for its tomatoes. So much for their much vaunted claim to be "committed to supporting and promoting economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable agriculture" and supporting "the right of all workers to be treated fairly and humanely."

Little has changed since 1960 when the journalist Edward R Murrow shocked Americans with Harvest Of Shame, a television broadcast about the bleak and underpaid lives of the workers who put food on their tables and famously stated

"We used to own our slaves but now we just rent them,"

Together towards a new world

The Irish diaspora consists at the top estimate and interpretation contains over 80 million people, which is over fourteen times the population of the island of Ireland itself (5.9 million in 2006). The governement of Ireland defines it in legal terms: the Irish diaspora are those of Irish nationality who habitually reside outside of the island of Ireland. This includes Irish citizens who have emigrated abroad and their children also grand children in some cases ), who are Irish citizens by descent under Irish law. . Under this legal definition, the Irish diaspora is considerably smaller than popular belief - some 3 million persons, of whom 1.2 million are Irish-born emigrants.

Therefore one would think that the Irish would understand the need for others to leave their lands and seek out new shores . The i read this BBC report with interest .

Siobhan O'Donahue , director of a drop-in centre that looks after immigrants in Dublin , describes it thus :-

"We saw them essentially as units of labour. We didn't see them as people with social and community needs. "

An economic boom turned a relatively-poor, agricultural nation into a "Celtic Tiger". To fuel this growth, Ireland needed to allow in workers from the new Eastern European members of the European Union . The result is that now, more than one in seven people in Ireland was born outside the country. Ireland invited immigrants to come and work, without giving any thought to their wider impact. The planning and infrastructure wasn't put in place . Nobody has sought fit to deal with the social needs : schooling, housing, access to healthcare.

The Education Department , for instance , had belatedly realised there were not enough places for immigrants' children . They had been turned down by the local schools. The result was that they ended up in an emergency facility, one that caters almost exclusively for boys and girls of African or Arab origin.

"I would rather my children knew how Irish children live," says one mother there, disappointed to see her son going to school only with other black children.

The Herald carries an article that Scotland needs to attract 20,000 immigrants a year to counter a declining population and to save the economy from collapse over the next 30 years, a government-backed report warns . The alternative is an impoverished future, with a shrinking younger workforce supporting an ageing population. It predicts that by 2017 the country's population may fall below five million for the first time since the 1940s.

The report says "In the last few years, Scotland has recorded clear net in-migration gains. Maintaining or improving this current balance of migration could prove key to addressing the challenges posed by Scotland's ageing population and projected population decline."

Yet Scotland follows the example of Ireland .

Michael Luby, national sales manager at the Big Issue

"It's unbelievable," he said "we're seeing Romanian people come over here expecting work, only to find that they don't get access to the housing, benefits and services any other people get..."

An Edinburgh landlord has been profiting from housing over 50 Romanian migrants in squalid conditions . One of the occupants described the conditions as “misery” while others made allegations of mistreatment .

Yet the mass media choose to concentrate on perpetuating urban myths about the arrival of foreign workers , furthering divisions and mistrust . Eastern European bar staff and doormen are now among the most common victims of racial abuse and assault in Edinburgh.

In 2006 some 400,000 people left Britain, more than half of whom were UK citizens. Britain is becoming a country of revolving doors rather than overflowing floodgates .

The other war in Afghanistan

There is another war going on in Afghanistan - one which is being ignored by the media - and that is the class war .

The Safi fur and wool factory, in Herat city, western Afghanistan, has more than 350 female and 300 male workers who earn only 300 Afghanis (US$6) for their 48-hour, six-day week. The factory produces coats, jackets, hats and other garments for the European and North American markets. There are more than 1,500 women working in four such factories in Herat city. Workers have to separate fur from goats’ hair and weave sheep’s wool without protective gloves or masks.

Ahmad Zia Rahmani, a lung and chest diseases specialist at the Herat city hospital, says workers in fur and wool factories are vulnerable to virulent microbes, which harm the respiratory system and cause chest infections. “Sheep’s wool and goats’ hair usually contain harmful bacteria which can easily be transferred to a human via close contact and inhalation,” Rahmani said. Mothers who regularly breastfeed their babies and consume food at the factory can also transfer dangerous microbes to their children if they do not wash their hands with antibacterial soap, Rahmani added.

Jamila has worked in the factory for more than a year and recently experienced an unrelenting pain in her chest. “First, I was coughing and now I feel a terrible pain in my chest,” the 32-year-old said. “Doctors and medicine are expensive,” she said.

In the past 12 months, seven women workers of the wool and fur factories in Herat have died due to respiratory diseases and chest infections.

According to Afghanistan’s labour law, public and private employers should provide medical insurance to employees who work in hazardous environments. However, there are too many hurdles - including poor law enforcement institutions, lack of awareness about women's rights and conservative traditions - which constrict the law on paper with weak or no practical power. Almost all workers in factories in Herat province have no written contract with their employers, particularly in the private sector. Workers and employers have only verbal agreements, which do not cover medical and hazard insurance.

Meanwhile

Iran is deporting thousands of Afghans . Most deportees are young, single men who migrated to Iran mostly in search of employment and economic opportunities, aid agencies say. Provincial officials, however, are concerned that hundreds of women, children and elderly people have also been evicted.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says there are more than 900,000 registered Afghan refugees in Iran. However, the large numbers of Afghans who do not have refugee status and are considered illegal are not protected by UNHCR. Since April, some 200,000 Afghans living in Iran illegally have been deported .

Slave Labour in Scotland

From The Prague Post

The life many migrant workers find in Scotland is not what they had envisioned. They are frequently abused and coerced into accepting illegal working conditions, said Beth Herzfeld of Anti-Slavery International. According to Herzfeld, debt-bondage is one of the tactics used to traffic people. Trafficking is when someone is taken to, or freely goes, from one place to another by means of deception, coercion or violence. Often, as in the case of many Czech workers in Scotland, their passports are confiscated, they have a debt to repay and, being unsure of their legal right to work, they are controlled by threats.

Paul Millar, a Czech-born honorary consul in Scotland, estimated that about 2,000 to 3,500 Czechs work in Scotland. Often, these people are lured by unscrupulous employment agencies promising well-paid jobs. The most common form of abuse is debt-bondage, Millar said. This is the illegal practice of paying an employer up-front for work, rent and food.

Dangerous housing and miserable pay are often the hallmarks of foreign workers’ lives in Scotland, according to Ian Tusker, assistant secretary of the Scottish Trade Union Congress .
“You could work all day for a pittance, basically."

China's Class War

A group of armed men attacked as many as 300 migrant construction workers who were striking over unpaid wages . At least one person is reported to be fighting for his life and six others were injured in the clashes in Heyuan city, in Guangdong province.

Nearly 300 workers went on strike last Friday after they had gone four months without wages while working on the construction site of a hydropower station at Heyuan, local media reported.
They were said to be demanding their salaries from the Fuyuan energy firm when as many as 300 armed men arrived at the site. The first batch of about 50 gangsters came with spades in their hands, and the second batch had axes, steel pipes and sabres, and there were more behind them.

Local media denounced the incident in unusually strongly worded editorials, alleging collusion between the power firm and local government officials, and drawing parallels with the recent furore over forced labour in brick kilns in the north. Rights groups say China's estimated 200 million migrant workers -- who in recent years have flocked from the vast, poor countryside to the booming cities -- often lack health care, may have their pay withheld and are vulnerable to exploitation.

Migrant Workers - Labour turns the screw once more

Migrant workers who come to Britain as cooks, cleaners and nannies could become virtual slaves in their employers' homes under new immigration rules, campaigners are warning. Ministers faced charges of hypocrisy as Labour campaigned on the issue in opposition, highlighting accusations of sexual abuse, physical assault and poverty pay regularly faced by foreign domestic staff.

17,000 non-European Union foreign nationals receive visas every year to work as domestic servants in Britain.
They are legally entitled to leave their employer if they are abused or exploited and to receive basic protection - including the minimum wage - under UK employment law.
That will be swept away by proposed changes to immigration rules, which will severely restrict domestic workers' rights.
In future domestic workers will only be allowed in on non-renewable business visas which will end their ability to get a new job if they are mistreated by their employer.

Kate Roberts, a community support worker , which counsels the victims of abusive employers, said she was horrified by the Government's change of heart. "These changes will remove the most basic protection for migrant domestic workers," she said. "They will be left incredibly vulnerable to exploitation or abuse."

Barbara Roche, a former immigration minister, said: " These new proposals are a very retrograde step. Workers who suffer abuse from employers will feel absolutely alone. "

Diana Holland, the T&G National Organiser for Women, Race and Equalities, said that until 1998 the visa system had turned "migrant domestic workers into slaves". She warned that Home Office policy reversal would strip them of their right to challenge and would once again mean abuse going unchecked.


This month's Socialist Standard carries an editorial on slavery