By Park Si-soo
Braving frigid weather, more than 400 migrants and human rights activists called on the government to stop its crackdown on undocumented foreigners and overhaul the employment system to eliminate exploitation and discrimination against them within the workplace.
At a rally in central Seoul on Sunday, they also called for measures to improve the living standards of immigrant women and their children, many of whom struggle with racial and other forms of discrimination and consistent financial hardships.
The gathering was co-hosted by two pro-migrant organizations — the Alliance for Migrants’ Equality and Human Rights and the Joint Committee with Migrants in Korea — to celebrate the 20th anniversary of International Migrant Day, which fell Saturday.
Amnesty International hosted a similar street campaign in Seoul one day earlier, depicting foreign workers in South Korea as “human machines.”
The world’s largest human rights watchdog denounced Korean employers for treating their foreign staffers like machinery they imported to do risky work. “They (immigrant workers) are not human machines,” it said in a statement.
The campaigns over the weekend put particular emphasis on the absence of human rights of those overstaying their visas by what they call a “reckless” crackdown by the immigration authorities.
Prompting the campaign was the tragic death of an unregistered Vietnamese worker in a sweeping crackdown on undocumented foreigners ahead of the G20 summit in Seoul last month. The Vietnamese national died from brain damage after falling from the second floor of a factory while trying to avoid being caught by immigrant officers.
“The crackdown has put many foreign workers on the line,” said Jung Young-sup, a senior official from the Migrant Trade Union. “The government should put priority on how to legalize their presence here rather than kicking them out of the country.”
Participants of the rally also called for repealing an article banning foreign workers under the Employment Permit System (EPS) from changing workplaces more than three times during their three-year stay in South Korea.
They claimed the restriction is “discriminatory and threatens foreign workers of being exploited.”
Under the EPS, foreign workers residing here on an E-9 visa are in principle allowed to change their workplaces up to three times, and those who are dismissed by the third workplace are sent back to their home country.
“We demand the article be removed to give foreigners freer access to the local job market,” Jung said.
The justifiability of the “three-change-and-out” policy is now being reviewed by the Constitutional Court. Three Indonesian workers filed a petition with the court in 2007, insisting it apparently infringes upon the freedom of job choice and the general pursuit of freedom — two values guaranteed by the Constitution.
In a public hearing on the issue in October, Yoon Ji-young, a lawyer representing the petitioners, said foreigners under the EPS have to endure exploitation and other kinds of abuse in order not to be fired at their third workplace.
Lee Chang-hwan, a lawyer representing the labor ministry, claimed the restriction is necessary to prevent an overflow of foreign workers into domestic job market.
Professor Han Sang-hee of Konkuk University rebutted the claim, saying there are no grounds that limiting the number of job changes for immigrant workers will help protect jobs for locals.
The EPS was introduced six years ago, with more than 164,000 foreigners working in South Korea under the program.