Toughening of visa rules

By Michael Stevens

The Korea Times reported recently that the government is once again changing its policies of issuing work visas to the foreign community, with particular emphasis on ethnic Koreans born outside of this country this time.

Under the new rules, only those who have worked for over two years in the agriculture and livestock industry or in the manufacturing industry outside of a metropolitan area will be entitled to the F4 visa. The stated reason for this change is based on public criticism that ethnic Koreans are eating away job opportunities of local citizens.

One can only assume that the ethnic Koreans that this new policy is really directed to are the Koreans from such countries as China or Mongolia, who normally get jobs in the manufacturing industries in this country. Often these workers are paid considerably less than their native Korean counterparts, who may normally see themselves as being above doing manual labor in the first place.

I say this since many of these native Koreans wouldn’t even consider taking these relatively low-paying manufacturing jobs if the economy weren’t doing so bad at the moment, or if it weren’t for the fact that so many larger, once stable, corporations weren’t leaving Korea for cheaper labor in foreign countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia.

In my opinion the answer for the Korean government is not to alter the established immigration law but to focus on the issue of the manufacturing industries that use these immigrants as basically slave labor, given the fact they work them more hours for less pay _ often as much as 50 percent less.

It would be both ethically and morally correct that these industries pay ethnic Koreans the same wages as native Koreans with the same education and experience. If this were the case, these industries would not see the benefit of hiring foreign Koreans workers over their own native countrymen. Other than the fact that most non-native Koreans may prove less troublesome or better at doing the specific job that would be cataloged as being one of the 3-Ds (dirty, difficult and dangerous).

It is important for the Korean government to not bend to the wishes of the Korean people when they are being unreasonable toward those they consider to be outsiders. It would be better for the government to level the playing field and establish a set of regulations that protects both ethnic Koreans and native Koreans alike.

These regulations should either create new laws if they are needed or strengthen the existing labor laws that regulate the set hours and pay that manufacturers can legally offer its foreign labor force ― being equally fair to both the employer and all workers no matter what their immigration status may be.

If Korea is ever going to embrace what it truly means to be a multi-cultural society, it must not regulate immigrants from other countries solely based on protecting its people against their own xenophobic fears.

I can understand and totally agree with the government’s desire to regulate the undesirables, such as criminals and those that would take advantage of Korean society. Yet to regulate them based on the belief that the Korean people want to protect themselves from those that the Korean factory owners would exploit is beyond reason.

With the projected slowdown of the future growth of the native workforce as the next generation reaches retirement age, immigrants are likely to hold an even greater share of jobs in the future. And although immigrant workers can be found in virtually every industry and occupation, they are concentrated in certain low-skill sectors such as labor-intensive manufacturing jobs.

Any decisions regarding immigration policy ― in particular, how many immigrants to admit, the criteria for entry and how to deal with unauthorized admissions ― are likely to shape the size and composition of the Korean labor force well into the future.

The writer is a social studies teacher at Lighthouse International School. He can be reached at elscity@gmail.com.