Largest migration in history occurs as workers from poor nations seek jobs, decent wages

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"This international reserve army of labor is ideal for today's capitalist countries SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 1991 11 Today 20 million people are on the move, leaving their homes to work in another country often thousands of miles away. Filipinos are working in Saudi Arabia, Turks are in auto plants in Germany, Vietnamese and North Koreans have taken jobs in Siberia.

Unlike earlier migrations, few of the 20 million have left their homelands for good. They are "guest" workers or contract laborers, expected to return home when their jobs fold.

This international reserve army of labor is ideal for today's capitalist countries. Businessmen are relieved of the costs of extended unemployment benefits and oldage pensions. Healthcare can be limited to short-term treatment. Governments do not have to worry about permanent settlers from Asia or Africa, although some guest workers stay a very long time.

Today, few cities on the globe are more than 12 hours air-travel time apart. Jobs at high wages are the lure that draws workers out of the Philippines, Bangladesh, Morocco, and some European countries. "High wages" is a relative term, however. A janitor in Kuwait earns $112 a month, starvation wages to an American. But a worker in Bangladesh makes only $113 a year!

' Aliens' with no rights The Bangladesh worker in Kuwait could send at least half his salary to his family back home. These remittances from Bangladeshis overseas add up to $700 million a year in hard currency.

Jordan earns 120 percent more from remittances than from exports. Other countries benefiting from their citizens working abroad are Egypt, with $3.4 billion in remittances; India,with $2.9 billion; and Pakistan with $2 billion. Surprisingly, Yugoslavia eamed the most hard currency, $4.9 billion in 1988, by sending its workers to toil in capitalist states.

Today's contract laborer remains an "alien" with no rights, working at the worst jobs, and often isolated in compounds like the hostels of South Africa. Turks and Algerians may live for years in Germany or France but they remain aliens subject to deportation.

The United States had its "guest" workers when the Bracero program to import temporary farm labor was in effect in the 1940s. Today, immigration laws are revised almost yearly to regulate the flow of foreign workers to the United States. This ambivalence leaves the undocumented worker helpless against super-exploitation and government repression.

Free Trade treaties with Mexico and moving U.S. plants there will not stem the flow of the desperately poor to the United States. So long as a worker in Mexico makes only 50 cents an hour, he or she will cross the border to become part of the most vulnerable and super-exploited section of the American labor force.

Both Iraq and Kuwait treated their "guest" workers as less than guests during and after the Gulf War. Thousands of Jordanians and Indians were sent home without notice. Palestinians, who have no home, were simply pushed over the border, into the desert.

The Philippines lost $400 million when its nationals were kicked out of Kuwait. Forty countries lost a total of $40 billion as their expatriates lost their jobs.

In the meantime, the recession is wiping out the jobs of millions of other contract e1 La laborers. They get no unemployment benefits or social welfare. They are simply shipped back home, where they can only survive as best they can while waiting for jobs to open up elsewhere.

Their prospects can only be low-paid work that keeps the contract laborer at the bottom of the economic ladder. This international reserve labor pool of over 20 million will grow larger as the gulf between the rich and poor nations widens. The gap is bound to grow as the poorest nations export their most valuable asset.

The funds these workers send home helps their families, and part of the hard currency may be invested, but this hardly compensates for the country's loss of human resources.

Right to travel

Every worker should have the right to travel and work anywhere. But 90 percent of the migrants prefer to work in their own country. It is only the gap between rich and poor nations that drives them to slave as second-class "aliens" in a disant land.

There can be one favorable outcome of the new migration that the rich and powerful will not favor. Travel and work in foreign lands must broaden the outlook of workers who had been bound by ancient customs at home.

Some men and women will have taken part in mass production, experienced union life, and learn working-class politics. They will not be satisfied with the stagnant status quo at home.

From their ranks will come new leaders, who will challenge their own ruling class and free themselves from the dead-end prospect of being part of the international "reserve army" of low-paid labor.

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Undeterred by murderous attacks by riot police, South Koreans have refused to end their fight for political democracy. a petty-bourgeoisie frightened by the regime's excesses but by no means favorable to the workers and students.

In 1986, Kim Dae-jung said: "We need the support of the middle class. They want democracy but fear disorder." In the recent wave of protests, he refused to call for the resignation of Roh Tae-woo, which earned him an egg-throwing reception from the University of Seoul students.

Despite the repression it has suffered and the banning of its National Council, the student movement has considerable potential for mobilization. It is the youth that is in the frontline of the struggle to oust the government, as it was back in 1960, when it brought down Syngman Rhee, the first of a long series of U.S. puppets.

The main ideologies of the youth are Marxist and Minjung thought. The latter (minjung means "masses" in Korean) is a sort of populist mysticism inspired by a long tradition of peasant revolts.

The Minjung current is strongly marked by nationalism and calls for a workers' and peasants' government in opposition to the rule of the U.S. through its local puppets. This current has been at the head of the most violent actions, such as the Death Brigades for the Salvation of the Nation and the wave of self-immolations.

The Marxists are organized in underground "study circles" (Chiha) and call for a revolutionary reunification of Korea from