More openness toward migrant workers needed
South Korea has been pressured to find a proper solution to the rapidly decreasing population amid persistent low births and fast aging. It has poured some 280 trillion won ($22.7 billion) into propping up the birth rate over the past 15 years. Yet such efforts largely fell flat, with the total fertility rate (the total number of offspring born to the average woman during her lifetime) reaching only 0.81 in 2021, the world's lowest level.
As a highly feasible remedy for the ever-serious demographic problem, there are growing voices calling for more generous and open immigration policies. Given this, albeit belated, it is encouraging the Yoon Suk Yeol administration unveiled a plan to install an agency in charge of immigration affairs sometime in the first half of this year.
Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon told the president in a briefing Thursday that the envisaged apparatus will play the role of a control tower for diverse immigration policies. The ministry formed a taskforce team last November to discuss how to handle the issues of immigration covering arrivals and departures, expats and refugees. Experts from various sectors of society took part in the discussion and agreed on the need to speed up efforts to establish the immigration office soon. The plan has made little progress despite much talks.
The effects of the possible setup of an immigration agency will be practical and immediate. For instance, the population-related policies have so far been dispersed in many ministries, making it difficult to push for a related agenda effectively. But the new office will be able to coordinate overlapped policies such as budget plans to efficiently implement relevant measures at the pan-government level.
Yet such efficiency may be minimal compared to the huge impact the new policies will have on the nation. New migration policies have been essential to the national survival in view of the fast depletion of the population, mainly in rural areas, with no viable clues to the chronic low birth problem.
The ministry is seeking to mitigate the requirements for ethnic Koreans to get jobs here, while providing those equipped with basic qualifications, such as scholastic background, with more opportunities to allow permanent stay. Due to low fertility paired with rapid aging, South Korea's economic size will likely dwindle to the world's 15th in 30 years, according to Goldman Sachs, a U.S.-based global investment bank.
The bank, in its global economic outlook released on Jan. 6, forecast Korea to register 0.8 percent growth in 2040. The growth will continue to fall in the negative territories of 0.1 percent and 0.2 percent in the 2060s and 2070s, respectively. It projected Korea to be the only nation of 34 advanced countries to see its economy contract.
The previous governments discussed the issue of an immigration agency but to no particular avail due to fears that more migrants would take away jobs from Korean nationals coupled with concerns about a possible rise in crime by foreigners. Now it is time to totally change our viewpoint. In fact, foreign workers have long been the major workforce in many local provinces.
We need to ponder how to induce global high-quality human resources beyond the need to fill the shortage in work sites. We should learn from the cases of Japan, Taiwan and China which have been rushing to expand immigration-related organizations and budgets.
According to data released by Statistics Korea, the number of migrant workers here continued to increase, reaching 840,000 last month. And the number will likely increase further this year as the government is poised to ease the visa issuance requirements for jobseekers. What is urgent at this time is our discriminatory and antagonistic attitudes toward migrant workers, which we should cast away immediately.
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