No rights for migrant workers

An enormous social change has taken place in Ireland since the mid-'90s. It is estimated that some 200,000 migrant workers have come to Ireland since 1996, representing some 4% of the total population of Ireland.

To date, the changing ethnic character of our population has been portrayed as the inflow of asylum seekers, who aren't 'genuine' but are really economic migrants. This deliberate confusion was first propagated by the then Justice Minister, John O'Donoghue, who claimed that 95% of asylum seekers were 'bogus'. This was a short step to the current orthodoxy of Minister McDowell — that asylum seekers are mostly 'illegal'.

This was the view attacked so sharply by Amnesty International when they courageously ran an advertisement in the broadsheets, picturing Mary Harney, Minister O'Donoghue and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, with a caption 'Racists?'

How asylum seekers could ever be classed as 'illegals' is beyond the realm of understanding. The UN Convention of Human Rights establishes an incontrovertible right for anyone to seek asylum in any land, as they flee their home country in fear of persecution. They are asylum seekers until such time as the grounds of their fears are adjudicated — which establishes whether they are refugees, or, in the opinion of this state, they are not. They were never 'illegal' asylum seekers.

Asylum seekers are not only denied the right to work. They are paid an allowance of €19.10 for adults and an addition €9.55 for children. It is proposed now to transfer the administration of the payments from Health Boards to the Department of Justice, which gives grounds for believing that Ireland is moving to the position obtaining in England, which requires asylum seekers to remain in official accommodation or detention until their case is decided.

Under the new prescriptions, given in last week's estimates, for qualifying for Social welfare assistance with rent allowance, asylum seekers are all, at one stroke, denied the opportunity of securing accommodation outside of state 'encampments', like Mosney, or Athlone.

Migrant workers

The disgraceful higgledy piggeldy 'system' for asylum seekers is bad enough. But the conditions of migrant labour to this country have gone largely unnoticed, and are a scandal. There are three principle aspects of the current situation which give rise to the abuse of migrant workers.

Firstly, work permits to come here are applied for by employers, on behalf of named people, and continue to be held by the employer. This practice makes migrant workers entirely dependent on their employer. Migrant worker without an employment permit cannot seek alternative employment. Nor have they the right to remain in this country without their permit. They become 'illegal' through no fault of their own.

This is a severe discouragement to any migrant worker who might wish to protest working conditions or treatment at the hands of the boss. Stories of women with work permits to work as cleaners, housekeepers, children minders, have emerged, where women are powerless to protest their poor conditions, or non fulfilment of contracts, for fear of losing their permit to stay, yet are unable to earn sufficient money to go.

Families split

There is no guaranteed right for a migrant worker here to bring in their spouse or family. A spouse most often will be allowed to join their partner, but once here, the spouse is denied the right to work. They are here only as dependents of the migrant workers, and their continued life here is dependent on the continuation of that partnership. Such visiting spouses have no independent rights as human beings.

Furthermore, a work permit is granted for a maximum of one year, renewable annually: but it is the employer who applies for the renewal, not the migrant worker. A migrant worker remains vulnerable to and is obliged to submit to what are often entirely illegal working conditions.

There have been instances of employers paying less than the statutory minimum wage, or making illegitimate deductions from wage packets. A common practice is the employer 'providing' and charging for accommodation, often in dormitories, sometimes even on site, or charging for transport from house to site, or charging for work clothes, and so on. Employers have even deducted the cost of the work permit from migrant workers' wages, although this has been declared illegal.

But what use is the law if you cannot enforce it? What use are written rights, if you cannot understand the language in which they are written?

Cheap 'economic units'

Migrant workers have no entitlement to access education and training, which reflects the current government view that migrant workers are essentially temporary - they'll be here just so long as we want them. It is a view that sees migrant workers as economic units, like the 'gastarbeiter' of yesteryear in Germany, or the black workers 'used' in the mines in South Africa in the days of Apartheid.

These workers will provide a convenient cushion for a downturn in the economy and subsequent high unemployment. Migrant labourers can be sent home at the drop of a hat, or the drop in job vacancies.

Buying work permits through 'education'

A great number of migrants to Ireland have come for the declared purpose of full time education, which they themselves pay for, at often exorbitant rates. On this visa, they are allowed to work 20 hours a week, along with their studies, and full time in vacations. This system of 'work visas' has, of course, led to considerable abuse.

Some of the schools which have offered these 'language courses' were the subject of exposure over a year ago, as fraudulently charging excessive fees, with no educational provision worthy of the name. They are merely dodges by which work permits here can be 'bought', which local would-be 'educationalists' are exploiting to their economic advantage.

No integration

This view of migrant workers as economic units is central to the whole lack of provision for migrants. There is no programme for integration, for sharing of cultural values or understanding of local customs and practices in Ireland, leave alone acquiring fluency in the language. Such an absence is a recipe for disaster, especially when compounded with the straitened economic circumstances in which most migrant workers, with or without their families, live and work, which in the end adds up to separation and isolation from the local community.

Migrant workers become 'the other', the 'them' of racist comments such as 'they are taking our jobs', 'our houses', 'our hospital beds', which so quickly become the basis of racist attitudes, racist abuse, and racist attack. The absence of an immigration policy by government is the cause, deliberate or otherwise, of mounting racism within our society, which has been evidenced in recent social research.

In fact, many migrant workers to this country may intend to make Ireland their home, and after a period of working here, hope to apply for residency. There is no provision for such applications, even after working here for a decade or more. Why not? Because the government does not intend to have 'them' one moment longer than the economy may need 'them'.

Economics of migrant workers

This attitude is all the more reprehensible given the economic facts of the Irish situation. On the one hand it was clearly announced, by the Dublin Government two years ago, that to implement its economic five-year plan the economy would need to take in at least 200,000 workers. Many of these migrant workers have come here and have taken up the very jobs the Irish labour force is reluctant to fill — jobs in the service industry, the meat factories, crop picking, nursing, etc. Today's economy in Ireland undoubtedly could not manage without their labour.

Furthermore, it has been argued that the demographics of the Irish population are skewed to the extent that in a decade or so, there will not be enough Irish workers to fund the retirement and pensions of a top-heavy aging population. Migrant labour, insofar as it adds to the number of young workers, redresses this balance.

This is the economic reality behind the new Ireland — an Ireland of multi-ethnicity, which could so easily turn to an Ireland of racial strife unless government steps in with policies that recognise human beings, no matter their colour or origin, as people with equal human rights.