by hilzoy
"Thousands of foreign workers, including London School of Economics graduates with six-digit salaries and desperately poor Bangladeshi factory workers, are streaming home as the economy here suffers the worse recession in Southeast Asia. Singapore is an epicenter of what analysts call a new flow of reverse migration away from hard-hit, globalized economies including Dubai and Britain that were once beacons for foreign labor. Economists from Credit Suisse predict an exodus of 200,000 foreigners — or one in every 15 workers here — by the end of 2010.
As exports crash worldwide, factories from China to Eastern Europe are shuttering. The World Bank estimates the crisis will trap at least 53 million more people in the developing world in poverty this year. (…)
Remittances — the financial lifelines sent home by foreign workers — are falling from Latin America to Central Asia. The drop has been so sharp in Kyrgyzstan, which relies on remittances for 27 percent of its gross domestic product, that the U.N. World Food Program was asked to rush in emergency food aid in November for the first time since 1992. "This is a new income hit to people who can afford it the least," said Josette Sheeran, the program's executive director."
"Over the past eight years, textile and shoe factories in the Thai capital of Bangkok boomed, churning out Levi's jeans and Reebok sneakers to meet record demand in the United States and Europe. When orders bested their capacity to fill them, Bangkok factories subcontracted work to new factories that sprouted up on Thailand's long and porous western border. Facing a repressive government under U.S. sanctions, thousands of Burmese risked their lives in a quest for jobs in Thailand. Lamin, a 25-year-old with traditional yellow wood dust applied to her delicate copper face, was one of them.
An orphan living with relatives who could no longer support her, Lamin spirited herself across the Mae Sot river in an inner tube in late 2006. She landed work easily in a Thai factory making linings for pants with 800 other women. Working from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week, she earned $100 a month. Thirty percent went back to her employer to cover room and board. She still managed to send money home and pocket almost $20 to $30 a month. "Yes, it was tough" said Lamin, who goes by one name, "but it was still better than Burma."
When the global economy went code red, Thailand's exports collapsed. In December, the factory where Lamin worked began losing contracts. In mid-February, her employer joined dozens of others shutting down in the region and adding to a swelling refugee crisis. All 800 Burmese workers at Lamin's job site were fired.
Tucking away her $350 life savings, she tried to join many of her jobless co-workers crossing back into Burma. On the way, she was shaken down by Thai police conducting crackdowns in the area as public opinion shifts against foreign workers in hard economic times. Now penniless, she is living in a half-way house in a dusty corner of town, sleeping on a concert floor and hoping to persuade her old employer to fund her return home."
"I don't want to go back to Burma. It is a horror, there is only poverty, no jobs," she said, eyes downcast as she spoke through a translator. "They only wanted us in Thailand when they needed us. Now, they just want us gone."
This is, of course, by me, hilzoy. Not superuser. Sigh.
Where are all those callow proponents of “creative destruction” in the face of this cruel reality? Putting a face on a factor of production can indeed be a sobering experience. Behold the paradise where unfettered capital is free to roam the world seeking higher returns, but labor is not.
I wonder whether the people who put the financial system at risk spared a thought for people like Lamin.
No.
Where are all those callow proponents of “creative destruction” in the face of this cruel reality?
They don’t give a crap about this cruel reality.
“I wonder whether the people who put the financial system at risk spared a thought for people like Lamin”
Not to be depressing, but I think it’s even worse than that. We have an economy that by its nature requires the existence of large numbers of extremely poor people. It’s the saddest thing. We’re the species that stunt-drives around evolution by crafting our own environments and institutions. And yet no-one is at the wheel.
I wonder whether the people who put the financial system at risk spared a thought
I removed a few words, but the answer remains the same.
“I wonder whether the people who put the financial system at risk spared a thought for people like Lamin”
Umm, really? These are the same people that are OK with paying Lamin $0.25/hour.
I wonder whether the people who put the financial system at risk spared a thought for people like Lamin. Somehow, I suspect not.
Surely you don’t really wonder. These are the people whose spokesman is Rick Santelli. Meaning that they regard even their fellow citizens as “losers” if they’re struggling with abusively high-rate mortgages. Low-wage workers abroad: Untermenschen
Look at the contempt expressed in the comments section here for anyone not in the top income brackets by our resident spokesman for the entrepreneurial royalty.
At a certain point, giving people the benefit of the doubt, even rhetorically, grows tiresome.
“I wonder …. etc.”
No, those people have invisible hands. Which is why we can’t put cuffs on them.
It’s a wondrous system.
Besides, asking people to “care” at this point in the rapine is pointless. Lamin should not demand that folks responsible for this care; she should arm herself and take their money.
The world is an Ayn Rand thug expressing itself in stilted prose; treat it as such.
The Cunning Realist recently had a John Cheever-like anecdote about an American Lamin on a commuter train.
He follows that with an ominous post about what is coming. Cunning Realist is a moderate conservative who works on Wall Street.
Incidentally, The Cunning Realist could have solved the “man-on-a-train- problem very easily, but didn’t.
Lamin is set upon by opportunistic thugs.
In America, the dispossessed become apparitions, except when they appear in welfare lines for the entertainment of angry Republicans.
Slightly off topic, but for all those who complain about H1B visa’s. If these people lose their jobs, they have something like two days to leave the country (dispose of possesions etc.). Then they have been paying into social security, unemplyment insurance, and disability insurance, and all these contributions will be left in the system. So a good part of the government connected part of employment-land is freeriding on these folks.
“Then they have been paying into social security, unemplyment insurance, and disability insurance, and all these contributions will be left in the system.”
That’s theft and it’s not just the H1Bs. The same holds true for the illegals, and for them it’s inevitable. It’s become enough of a problem that the IRS knows when someone fails to report $30K of income they didn’t know about because it was contributed under their stolen SSN, that the likeliest explanation is not tax evasion, it’s identity theft – that’s how common that scenatio has become.
Slightly off topic, but for all those who complain about H1B visa’s. If these people lose their jobs, they have something like two days to leave the country (dispose of possesions etc.).
That’s a reason to complain about H1B workers, not a reason not to complain about them. No one wants to – or should have to – compete with slave labor. Managers use the situation H1B workers are in as a tool of coercion.
I am opposed to all immigration under current circumstances, but the H1B program is even worse. It is designed to provide corporations with cheap workers who have no rights, and it drives down the incentive for Americans to obtain the skills covered by the program.
Now_what is right about the use of H1Bs as a form of slave labor. The worker keeps that visa and stays in status only as long as he holds the job, which is to say at the pleasure of the employer.