Statistics show a similar fluidity today, though these numbers tend to get lost in our culturally narcissistic debates over contemporary immigration patterns. Massey heads Princeton’s Mexican Migration Project, which has been collecting data on immigration for 25 years. In 1997, the Public Policy Institute analyst Belinda Reyes used that data to conduct a study of 42,000 documented and undocumented immigrants from western Mexico. Fifty percent, she found, returned in two years; 70 percent in 10 years. The immigrants who decided to stay were also the most desirable from a policy perspective: the most educated and the most integrated into the labor market. Those most likely to leave were uneducated men—the demographic that peoples guest worker programs from Saudi Arabia to Singapore.
One would expect return migration to increase as the cost of travel drops, and indeed this is what researchers have found. But the cost of border crossing has risen sharply since 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act militarized the border. Human smugglers charge more for their services, and the risk of death has trebled. The result, says Massey, is that return migration has halved. “People used to circulate, but now they don’t, because the cost of reentry is too high. Rather than go out and have to face the gauntlet again, they just stay,” he says.
Massey attributes the growth in the population of undocumented workers over the past two decades to the fact that circulation is more difficult than at any point in history. “In-migration has been fairly flat for 20 years,” he explains, “The explosive growth we realized in the 1990s and 2000 is mainly due to a reduction in out-migration.” Militarization of the border has encouraged huge numbers of workers to stay up north, cementing the idea that American immigration is intrinsically permanent.
Tolerating Inequality
HOME is one of a few new Singaporean organizations advocating
improvements in the treatment of guest workers, and if the
burgeoning immigrant support infrastructure in Hong Kong is any
guide, there will be more to come. These nascent organizations
suggest a decreased tolerance for the abuse of foreigners within
Singaporean borders. “The Ministry of Manpower has been in the dark
ages for the past century,” says Jolovan Wham, HOME’s executive
director. But as Jolovan deals with a phone call from a Bangladeshi
worker on his mobile phone, an administrative call on his landline,
and a family of Sri Lankan refugees in our presence, he explains
that the concept of foreign worker rights is becoming slightly less
alien.
For HOME, “equal rights” means a minimum wage, decent housing, and at least a single day off from work every week for women like Sri. They’d like foreign workers to be able to move between jobs, and to move into whatever sectors they like. As Jolovan tells it, the government has a total of two responses for everything HOME advocates: “social stability” and, oddly, “free markets.”
Employers are tied to the foreign workers they sponsor through S$5,000 bonds they receive only when the worker is repatriated. If workers were allowed some amount of freedom to change jobs, there would likely be periods during which they would be jobless, leaving no employer responsible for them. “The government is afraid there will be riots,” says Jolovan, “afraid that large numbers of workers hanging around without jobs will lead to social unrest.”
The government’s response to HOME’s request for more regulation is to defer to the market. But given the state-created lack of mobility within the labor market, it’s not at all clear that this makes sense. Workers can’t shop for a good wage once they’re in Singapore, so the usual reasons for giving competition free rein are not in play. “It’s not free,” says John Gee, president of Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), another foreign worker advocate organization. “That’s the nonsense about the argument. In so many issues we come up with, we’re told, oh well it’s better left up to the market. But the market isn’t operating.”
Despite their criticisms, neither of the organizations that represent foreign workers is pushing for anything like an end to the program. It’s easy to see why: The gains to the immigrants themselves are highly visible. Talking to immigrants in Singapore, it can seem as if the city-state is supporting all of Southeast Asia. Manalac lives with four other foreign workers in a spacious apartment in the suburbs; each is supporting dependents back home. Reyaz Uddin, a young Filipina accountant, is helping to send five of her seven brothers and sisters to school back home. “Also some nephews and nieces,” she explains, “we’re a close-knit family.” Her pay doubled the moment she started working in Singapore, and she seems not at all perturbed by the responsibility of caring for her family. “Maybe I’ll go to Hong Kong next,” she says, with the air of a well-off retiree deciding where to summer.
Little India is dotted with remittance centers, small windowed shops with plastic chairs full of men waiting to send money home to mothers, wives, and children. The need to send cash home has spawned an industry in itself, with over 100 remittance transfer companies now competing to send cash faster, cheaper, and more reliably from Singapore to origin countries. According to a 2006 report from the Asian Development Bank, immigrants in Singapore are sending home between $500 million and $700 million annually.
Thanks to the efficiencies of the remittance system, these immigrants are able to direct their money to parents and children rather than watch it dissipate as entire villages stake a claim. Some guest workers hesitate to visit their homes simply because, as comparatively wealthy and newly high-status returning workers, they will be asked to share their new wealth with distant cousins and relatives they didn’t know they had. In a 2005 study of Bangladeshi migrants in Singapore, the sociologists Md. Mizanur Rahman of the Asia Research Institute and Lian Kwen Fee of the National University of Singapore write that Bangladeshi villagers see money earned abroad as “easy money,” to be generously expended.
The same analysis found that migrants spend a considerable amount of money on “prestige goods” that will help accord them high-status positions when they return. One of Manalac’s five housemates has stuffed his closet-like bedroom with an electric guitar collection and a flat-screen TV. Migrants spend money “conspicuously in order to indicate that it has been earned easily (which is prestigious) and are lavish in their generosity to fellow villagers as well as to village causes in order to secure the goodwill of the community and a higher social standing.” Back home in Bangladesh, prominently displayed Singaporean goods reflect “families’ access to the foreign labor market, a source of prestige for their households.” Families who have sent guest workers abroad are referred to as “Singaporean families.” When outsiders visit a Singaporean family they expect to see goods bought in Singapore, all of which signal heightened status.
It is possible to acquire enough skills and time in Singapore to become a permanent resident, and therefore exempt from visa renewals or employment levies. The vast majority of low-skill foreign workers don’t plan on it, and no one expects them to try to assimilate while they’re here. No one demands that they learn English or teach their kids Singaporean history. “Hierarchy and segregation are part and parcel of the Singaporean psyche,” says Leong Chan Hoong, a psychologist at Singapore National University and an expert in the public perception of foreign workers. “Because of that, you are able to accept foreign workers more readily. You are assured that you will have some space, that your social, spatial identity will not be compromised with the huge influx of foreigners coming in.”
Superficially, it’s strange that states like Singapore and the United Arab Emirates are more welcoming to large numbers of immigrants than the United States and Western Europe. Singaporeans exhibit personality traits that predict hostility to immigrants—a comfort with hierarchy and traditionalism, for example—while residents of the U.S. and U.K. are more likely to exhibit immigrant-friendly traits like egalitarianism and openness to change.
Partly, this is explained by contrasting modes of government.
Singapore’s authoritarian regime is unabashedly pro-immigration;
it’s not clear that a democratic Singapore would be so welcoming.
As important, Chan Hoong explains, is Singapore’s willingness to
accommodate conservatives through policies of segregation that
Americans would probably find odious. Singaporean conservatives
mirror the American right in their fear of cultural erosion and
social disorder, but they have largely been placated by a system
that invites immigration while emphasizing legality and distance. A
comfort with hierarchy expresses itself as a comfort with
inequality, and countries that can tolerate inequality can allow
huge influxes of poor people.
The Great Migration
To liberal American opponents of guest worker programs, Sri and
Manalac are branded second-class citizens, members of an
underclass. The editors of The New Republic locate them
within a tradition of slavery. It would be better for Manalac and
Sri, in other words, if they’d never had the opportunity to come,
best if they’d stayed home and scraped by. Their decision to renew
their status simply signals the continuation of this confusion and
a false consciousness that propels them toward exploitation.
This ordering of priorities—equality first, migration later—should strike students of American history as odd. Over the course of the 20th century, millions of America’s second-class citizens made progress in just the opposite way. They moved north, to cities where they weren’t always welcome and certainly weren’t treated as equals. The story of black progress in America is intimately connected to their mobility rights, and a North that refused to let them travel until they had attained full equality would have greatly decelerated their political, social, and economic advance.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
Timothy|12.17.07 @ 3:09PM|#
That's a great article, Kerry. Really makes one wonder what the US's problem with that set up is. Oh, right, we've got a lot of racists like TLB and Mr. Lemur around. Silly me, there I was thinking we'd gotten past that in the last century.
Brandybuck|12.17.07 @ 3:20PM|#
A guest worker program here would be awesome. It would take the pressure off of illegal migration, provide for those low wage unskileld jobs that native workers won't do, and let the migrant support his family in dignity. It boggles my mind why anyone would be against it.
|12.17.07 @ 3:30PM|#
It boggles my mind why anyone would be against it.
Brandybuck -- Democrats oppose it because it allegedly threatens the jobs and wages that "belong" to unionized workers.
Republicans oppose it because they're afraid the workers, once inside the borders, will take off and pursue their own agenda.
It takes a libertarian, someone who actually thinks about each issue, "how can we maximize freedom", to support something like this.
Kolohe|12.17.07 @ 3:37PM|#
As someone who has met many (esp Fillippina), ahem, 'guest workers' throughout Oceana & East Asia, there are trade-offs which you are close to capturing in this article. But I hesitate to apply too strongly any lessons of East Asia/Pacific Rim or the Gulf to the United States. The underlying history, economic, social, and political systems are too different in the three disparate locations to draw too many universal meaningful lessons.
|12.17.07 @ 3:47PM|#
I am not sure this artcle shows that Singapore has a better Guest Worker model than the US, at all. It was also confusing to see the Guest Worker and Immigrant categories used interchangeably in the article - this may be true of the US, but the UAE and Singapore draw fairly clear distinction between the two. I don't believe the UAE offers a path to citizenship for Guest Workers at all. IIRC, Singapore and the UAE both used to have explicit ethnic/religious quotas for immigration. In fact, one of the Singaporean officials quoted in Howley's article seemed to admitting as much, only abliquely.
"Hierarchy and segregation are part and parcel of the Singaporean psyche," says Leong Chan Hoong, a psychologist at Singapore National University and an expert in the public perception of foreign workers. "Because of that, you are able to accept foreign workers more readily." - Yeah, right ! A fine way of saying that Guest Workers stay in their Ghettoes where they aren't seen by the real people. This is a better model than the US ? This is how you best build human capital ?
I'm not saying the US program is ideal, but come on ...
|12.17.07 @ 3:58PM|#
SM,
Leong Chan Hoong was describing an ugly trade-off. It's not an endorsement.
Nor is the piece an endorsement of the specific system it describes. As I articulate in the piece, the Singaporean model is fraught with serious problems (such as the lack of a minimum wage coupled with barriers to finding new employment.)
|12.17.07 @ 4:00PM|#
I would say that a guest worker program is better than other proposals presently on the political table and the apparent direction of the US in general.
But it is very much inferior to simple free migration. And I would say it is even inferior to the don't ask don't tell understanding that was common prior to the recent crackdowns and spates of fence building hysteria.
|12.17.07 @ 4:08PM|#
MikeP,
I agree that free migration would be ideal from both a moral and economic perspective. But given that there is no sizable constituency for open borders in any developed nation, it's worth considering the least bad alternative.
|12.17.07 @ 4:15PM|#
FWIW, I certainly wouldn't say Singapore's program is "successful." I'd say it's problematic but preferable to a number of alternatives.
TLB|12.17.07 @ 4:19PM|#
I didn't bother reading the article, but I'm going to guess that Kerry Howley forgot to mention that Singapore is basically a PoliceState.
A find failed to show her mentioning that the U.S. - unlike virtually every other country - has BirthrightCitizenship, meaning that we'd create even more misery and difficulty sending "guests" home.
And, I doubt whether Singapore would put up with meddling in their internal politics by their labor suppliers.
For instance, a UN official proposed former MexicanCitizens voting in U.S. elections in order to promote the MexicanAgenda inside the U.S..
And, even the president of Mexico has explicitly stated that they're going to be using U.S. nonprofits to promote the MexicanAgenda inside the U.S..
Giving foreign governments PoliticalPower inside the U.S. has a very steep cost, but I don't expect the corporatists at Reason to acknowledge that.
Timothy|12.17.07 @ 4:27PM|#
Oh TLB, did the MexicanAgenda steal your LunchMoney and give you an AtomicWedgie? Is that what this is all about? Do you need a hug?
|12.17.07 @ 4:35PM|#
Kerry,
I didn't think your article endorsed Singapore's Guest Worker program, i was really reacting to how it was described in the blog post.
But I do think Leong Chan Hoong's comment perfecty describes the attitude to immigrants that rests lightly behind Singapore's & especially the UAE's program. To paraphrase the Who song - "You talk about your xenophobia, i wish you could see mine" !
Also - LoneWackoIsAnIdiot.
Click \'n\' Learn|12.17.07 @ 5:13PM|#
Visitors might want to ask themselves, "did Howley disclose all the costs that the U.S. would endure from a similar 'guest' program here?"
Then, when they find out that she didn't, they should think of what name we call people who promote plans without revealing all the costs.
What would happen with a similar program here is that the MexicanGovernment would worm its way even more into our PoliticalSystem. Several nonprofits already have links to that government, and they've explicitly stated they're going to use nonprofits to push their agenda. And, there are several elected officials who more or less represent MexicanCitizens, such as GilCedillo. Why, there's even an IL state sen. who also serves on an AdvisoryCommittee to the MexicanGovernment. In GA, a former MexicanConsulGeneral is particularly active in pushing the MexicanAgenda, and he's got links to politicians.
So, importing a large number of "guests" will inevitably lead to the MexicanGovernment having more PoliticalPower inside the U.S.
Before promoting things like this, and to avoid being called "shills", "hacks", or worse, Reason should quantify that cost for us.
So, Kerry Howley and Reason, put a dollar figure on that and then get back to us.
|12.17.07 @ 5:19PM|#
Then, when they find out that she didn't, they should think of what name we call people who promote plans without revealing all the costs.
Presidential candidates?
Timothy|12.17.07 @ 5:56PM|#
Visitors might also want to ask themselves: Did TLB ever get beat up by the MexicanAgenda? How much does he hate the BrownPeople? Does he love la migra? How much of the MexicanReconquista has he ShottoDeath?
|12.17.07 @ 6:05PM|#
Singapore has an authoritarian political system, but its not a "police state" in the North Korean sense.
|12.17.07 @ 6:18PM|#
"I didn't bother reading the article, but I'm going to guess that Kerry Howley forgot to mention that Singapore is basically a PoliceState."
Hey TLB, do you support throwing people in jail for hiring illegal aliens to, I dunno, mow the lawn or watch the kids? ...here in the U.S. I mean?
'cause if you do--and I suspect you do--then I don't know where you get off faulting Singapore for being a police state.
If just half of what I heard about Singapore were true... You can't kiss in public. You can't chew bubble gum. ...but even if it is a police state--can I hire a guy to mow my lawn without some wacko makin' a federal case out of it?!
VM|12.17.07 @ 6:33PM|#
Timothy -
his coupon at ChiChis was rejected.
and then he bit his lip when getting the fried ice cream.
then his mother plugged and thumped Jose, the absolutely fantastically hot maintenance man.
VM|12.17.07 @ 6:38PM|#
but the solitary batshitInsaneOns is sure DarnedCute
BakedPenguin|12.17.07 @ 6:47PM|#
Moose, you forgot Maritza Martinez turning him down for the prom (hence "lone" wacko).
VM|12.17.07 @ 6:48PM|#
yes!!!!
Although I heard it was Juanita who rejected him...
BakedPenguin|12.17.07 @ 6:55PM|#
Well, you never see him on the War on Drugs threads. Maybe hearing her brings back painful memories.
Back OT, I find it interesting that all the anti-immigration folks are more than happy to demand to know the costs of allowing immigrants here, but are completely tone deaf to the costs (both direct and associated) of kicking immigrants out.
|12.17.07 @ 7:07PM|#
Oh, PleasePleasePLEASE!!! VisitMyWebSite*. Just once? PrettyPlease,with SugarOnTop?
She's gorgeous, isn't she? (the sites not really mine, but I did have a claim on her long ago.)
VM|12.17.07 @ 7:20PM|#
cool web site, LoneSuperDee!
Plus, we have it on authority that hier is a pic of SolitaryBatShitInsaneGuy right before Juanita stood him up for prom. (don't his parents look proud)
h/t: C"BP"B
|12.17.07 @ 8:52PM|#
US per capita GDP is $43,000. World per capita GDP is $10,500.
Free immigration sounds like a lovely idea, until three billion people start knocking on your door.
|12.18.07 @ 12:42AM|#
Delaware per capita GDP is $66,961. Mississippi per capita GDP is $27,829.
Free migration between states sounds like a lovely idea, until three million people start knocking on your door.
dbust1|12.18.07 @ 11:15AM|#
"Migrants spend money 'conspicuously in order to indicate that it has been earned easily (which is prestigious) and are lavish in their generosity to fellow villagers as well as to village causes in order to secure the goodwill of the community and a higher social standing'…When outsiders visit a Singaporean family they expect to see goods bought in Singapore, all of which signal heightened status."
Wait a minute, do you mean that capitalism and wealth are the answers to poverty and not socialism and welfare? But I thought welfare was meant to cure poverty. How could these little brown people think they have a better answer than middle and upper class American twit liberals?
Also, as an aside and in reference to TLB's comment on "BirthrightCitizenship," this is an idea whose time has since passed and it needs to be killed.
@Ken Shultz,
In Singapore you are not allowed to chew gum. My brother-in-law just came back from a business trip and confirmed this. On the bright side though, the Singaporean immigration officer did offer him a breath mint when he entered the country!
|12.18.07 @ 12:19PM|#
"Also, as an aside and in reference to TLB's comment on "BirthrightCitizenship," this is an idea whose time has since passed and it needs to be killed."
Because ? Let me guess - the country is full up ?
dbust1|12.18.07 @ 1:05PM|#
SM,
No, because the idea that you are a citizen simply because you are born here is ridiculous. The law was written in the days when it took weeks, if not months, to travel here and before the existence of our current welfare state. Also because a successful guest worker program would require the repeal of the law.
|12.18.07 @ 3:51PM|#
As someone with a wife and children, I really had trouble getting the thought of Mr. Manalac's separation from his family for the last 14 years out of my head. It's interesting that while the article mentioned his obvious hurt, it completely ignored that aspect throughout the US debate portion of the article. Many American's have grown up poor, maybe not mud hut poor, but poor none the less. I believe if you asked most of those people if they would have been willing to trade one of their parents for more material comfort, or even a better education, most would probably not make that trade. Although as a father I can certainly empathize with wanting to provide better for our children (after all, isn't that our job), and I can't say I wouldn't do the same, the idea of enticing people to break up their families so we can have cheap lettuce has perhaps a larger role in the debate then what was addressed in this article. Overall, however, I found the article quite well written, very informative, and the arguments compelling. While it's would be difficult for me to argue against what's basically a voluntary arrangement between parties, I find some of the consequences of a GWP troubling. I suppose I would prefer to see an increase in legal immigration, as well a huge improvement in efficiencies of that process (privatization?). At the very least I believe a GWP should address the family aspect of this debate.
douglas gray|12.18.07 @ 6:58PM|#
Good article, but there are some differences between Singapore and the U.S. Singapore is an authoritarian society, and has no problem with forbidding the family members from coming over, which I find draconian. The Mexicans know that we are wimps when it comes to enforcing immigration rulse that separate families. Kerry does contradict herself, first saying the man is happy with the situation, then mentioning that he misses his family.
Singapore puts drug dealers to death. Their value system is skewered.
|12.19.07 @ 2:59PM|#
Kerry does contradict herself, first saying the man is happy with the situation, then mentioning that he misses his family.
As it turns out, it's possible for a man to feel happy that he can feed his children while--at the very same time!--feeling sorry that he can't be with them. Sorry, not every emotional reaction can be expressed with an emoticon.
|12.19.07 @ 5:25PM|#
Malcolm Cook, Director of the East Asia Program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, has some thoughts on this essay on the Lowy Institute's blog, The Interpreter:
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2007/12/Southeast-Asian-labour-migration-Falling-off-the-ladder.aspx
|12.20.07 @ 10:57AM|#
Basically the article is informative about Singapore but is not applicable to the USA.The differences between the two entities are so huge the similarities that supposedly develop because of a shared phenomenon, immmigration, are not worth investigating.Bad idea for an article.
Luke Lea|12.20.07 @ 4:44PM|#
If guest workers are the best hope for the the third world's workers, then there is not much hope for the third world. Guest workers seldom go home, and immigration from poor countries to rich countries retards the development of the poor countries, which hurts the poor majority left behind.
World trade and investment is a better answer. And such immigration as does occur should run the other way, bringing much needed human capital to areas with very little.
These are really elementary conclusions from a theoretic point of view. The fact they aren't widely known is a standing indictment of the field of academics economics. It should be abolished in favor of the old field of political economy.
|12.20.07 @ 11:46PM|#
It's ludicrous to talk about a Singapore-style guest worker program in the US. We're going to somehow turn from the kind of country that gives free medical care to anchor babies to the kind that deports pregnant women? Employing illegal immigrants or helping someone overstay his visa is a *caning offense* in Singapore. I seriously, seriously doubt it is possible to maintain the kind of disparity in wealth that Singapore has without that level of authoritarianism, and it is absolutely not possible for the US.
Norman Hanscombe|12.21.07 @ 2:45AM|#
Discussion about whether or not Singapore has a 'good' system is irrelevant. Singapore has laws and widely accepted attitudes to social issues which are not found in liberal Western democracies. Let's face up to the fact that much of what may work well there, would prove disastrous elsewhere.
We can't make the world "better" by simply wishing things were different, or hoping sometging will come true.
|12.21.07 @ 6:17PM|#
The article confuses terms and therefore confuses the argument or rather, the arguments, length being another weakness of this long and tedious report.
An "IMMIGRANT" is a person who "EMIGRATED" from his country and is going to take up permanent residence in a new country legally. In the USA, immigrant status is granted by way of certain proscribed rules and regulations.
A "GUEST WORKER" falls under a completely different category. A guest worker is allowed to come and work in a specified country, usually under a "contract" for a specific time period only....a time period which can be extended depending on the rules of the country.
As the article states very well....A guest worker comes to build a nest-egg, not a nest.
The US has never had a "guest worker" program such as is found in the Gulf States, Europe and Singapore. What it does have is different kinds of "entry visas" one of which is a "working" visa, usually granted to people with highly valuable skills (usually in the computer field), artists and so on. But these really aren't "guest workers". They're visa holders, not contract workers.
Thus the term "illegal immigrant" so often applied to the millions of "illegals" in the USA, mostly from Latin America, is a contradiction in terms.
All "immigrants" are legal by definition. The proper term for illegals in the US should be "illegal aliens".....people in the country that have no legal status at all.
|12.22.07 @ 2:01AM|#
An "IMMIGRANT" is a person who "EMIGRATED" from his country and is going to take up permanent residence in a new country legally.
And the award for the comment that most assumes its conclusion goes to...
|12.22.07 @ 3:29PM|#
The inner part.
The inner light
and the beautiful
and tender narrator
invent a mutable
moment, when
Christmas arrives;
I see a blackbird
singing the birth
of an ancient era,
the time of my
life, the care and
the reason.
Francesco Sinibaldi
wyng|12.25.07 @ 7:14PM|#
Some things to clear up:
Yes we are authoritarian, but no-where a "police state". I find that label extremely insulting.
Apart from banning the sale of chewing gum (technically you still can chew gum, just not sell it), and draconian death penalties/caning, the people are allowed to do what they want. Including: having long hair, kissing/making out in public. The gay and lesbian scene in Singapore is actually rather thriving, even though there are laws that are anti-gay sex.
There are a lot of problems with the Singaporean government and the city's laws, but it's not as stuck up and regulated as some peeps here would believe.
Just some facts to clear things up.
thomas|12.26.07 @ 7:57PM|#
I am a "guest worker" in Singapore and think this article is far too kind to the place. People come because they are made promises that are rarely kept, and stay because it can be difficult to leave. Yes, the money can be good, but you are constantly reminded that you are a "guest" while doing the real work that Singaporeans are either unwilling or unable to do and then expected to say thank you after the terms of your contract suddenly change. Oh and legal recourse? Not for foreigners!
|12.29.07 @ 3:23PM|#
Prudence and the melody.
Arbours coloured
by a soft September
breeze delay in
the sunshine of a
beautiful morning,
and a loving
profile presents,
in a moment, the
taste of a dream.
Francesco Sinibaldi
nfl jerseys|11.6.10 @ 12:08AM|#
wysx