A
foreign worker is a person who works in a country other than the one of which he or she is a citizen. The term
migrant worker as discussed in the
migrant workerThe term migrant worker has different official meanings and connotations in different parts of the world. The United Nations' definition is broad, including any people working outside of their home country...
page is used in a particular UN resolution as a synonym for "foreign worker". In nations that have yet to ratify this resolution such as the United States the term
migrant worker is not synonymous with
foreign worker.
Foreign workers in the United States
The term
foreign worker refers to those who fall the reason it was into two specific cases.
Green card workers are individuals who have requested and received legal permanent residence in the United States and who intend to work in the United States on a permanent basis.
Guest workers are persons who typically travel (either legally or illegally) to a country with much more preferred job prospects than the one in which they currently reside. These "workers" temporarily reside in the country in which they work and will often send most or all wages earned, back to their country of origin.
Foreign workers in other countries
Sometimes, a host country sets up a program in order to invite guest workers, as did the
Federal Republic of GermanyWest Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
from 1955 until 1973, when over one million guest workers (German:
GastarbeiterGastarbeiter is German for "guest worker." It refers to migrant workers who had moved to West Germany mainly in the 1960s and 70s, seeking work as part of a formal guest worker programme...
) arrived, mostly from
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
.
Current estimates on the total number of international foreign workers stand at about 25 million , with a comparable number of dependents accompanying them. An estimated 14 million foreign workers live in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, which draws most of its immigrants from
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, including 4 or 5 million
undocumented workersIllegal Aliens is a 2007 film starring Anna Nicole Smith and Joanie Laurer. This comedy/science-fiction film is made in the mold of classic 1980s B-movies. Hitting stores on May 1, 2007, the release of the movie was pushed back following the death of Smith in February 2007 and it is her final film...
. It is estimated that around 5 million foreign workers live in Northwestern Europe, half a million in Japan, and around 5 million in Saudi Arabia.
The term can refer to professional experts, blue collar workers, language teachers, as well as entertainers.
Controversy
Although there have been disagreements over immigration in the broader sense (the current system facilitated with
green cardsUnited States lawful permanent residency refers to a person's immigration status: the person is authorized to live and work in the United States of America on a permanent basis....
). Most controversy in the United States since 1990 has been in regard to "guest workers" both legal and illegal.
In recent years in the United States, there has been much controversy over whether
H-1B visaThe H-1B is a non-immigrant visa in the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 101. It allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations...
s (a particular instance of
guest worker), intended to bring highly skilled workers to fill gaps in the domestic labor pool, are instead being used to bring in skilled, but otherwise unexceptional, economic migrants as cheap labor to fill jobs that could readily be filled domestically. There is much controversy over pending legislation that would allow unskilled labor to enter the country for this same reason.
Foreign students coming into the US are also migrant workers. They may face large salary differences until the obtention of their green card as their visa is only company-specific.
Moreover, they are barred from many high-profile jobs where citizenship is a prerequisite.
Again, specific to the
H-1B visaThe H-1B is a non-immigrant visa in the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 101. It allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations...
s,countries such as
IndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
,
PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, and the Philippines have long experienced a
brain drainHuman capital flight, more commonly referred to as "brain drain", is the large-scale emigration of a large group of individuals with technical skills or knowledge. The reasons usually include two aspects which respectively come from countries and individuals...
of highly skilled workers to countries like the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
BritainThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
,
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
,
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
,
JapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
,
South KoreaThe Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, and
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. While the absolute number of such émigrés are not large, the economic implications of such very skilled workers are significant.
Sometimes, citizens of countries with heavily urbanized areas have migrated to more agrarian countries in order to find jobs as farmers and such. For more on this, see
migrant workerThe term migrant worker has different official meanings and connotations in different parts of the world. The United Nations' definition is broad, including any people working outside of their home country...
s.
In certain less tolerant nations, foreign workers may be abused and treated as
second-class citizenSecond-class citizen is an informal term used to describe a person who is systematically discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or legal resident there...
s by the governments and/or lack of unions to assert worker rights, although a counterargument could be made in that foreigners do not deserve to be treated as full citizens as long as they are accorded basic human rights and civil liberties. For instance, in many Asian nations, it is common for employers to withhold passports from their employees, thus preventing the foreign worker from returning home. In conjunction with the withholding of salaries, it is meant to put the foreign workers in very difficult situation (particularly because the laws of these countries are typically not sympathetic to foreigners in practice). In the UK, organisations such as
KalayaanKalayaan is a United Kingdom charity which works with and to support migrant domestic workers in the UK. The word 'kalayaan' means 'freedom' in Tagalog, with over 200,000 Filipinos working in the UK as domestic workers.Kalayaan won the 2006 Centre for...
protect the rights of UK
migrant domestic workersMigrant Domestic Workers who work for wealthy families in the UK are currently allowed to change employers without breaking the law so long as they continue working full time as a domestic worker in a private household....
. (The term "migrant domestic worker" is a standardized term, where the word "domestic" is taken to mean "within the home," rather than its more prevalent meaning of being of or belonging to a particular sovereign state.)
See also
- Body Shops
- Bracero program
The Bracero Program was a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated by an August 1942 exchange of diplomatic notes between the United States and Mexico, for the importation of temporary contract laborers from Mexico to the United States.American president Franklin D...
(historical American guest-worker program)
- Foreign Worker Visa
A Foreign Worker visa is an immigration document that allows a foreign national to temporarily live and work in a country. Ideally, such foreign nationals remedy a skill shortage in the host country, which gains support of business groups.-See also:...
- Gastarbeiter
Gastarbeiter is German for "guest worker." It refers to migrant workers who had moved to West Germany mainly in the 1960s and 70s, seeking work as part of a formal guest worker programme...
(historical German guest-worker program)
- Guest worker program
The Guest Worker Program is a program that has been proposed many times, including by U.S. President George W. Bush's administration as a way to permit U.S. employers to sponsor non-U.S. citizens as laborers for approximately three years, to be deported afterwards if they have not yet obtained a...
(a proposed foreign-worker program in the U.S.)
- Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
- Labor shortage
In its narrowest definition, a labor shortage is an economic condition in which there are insufficient qualified candidates to fill the market-place demands for employment at any price...
- Lavoie v. Canada
Lavoie v. Canada, [2002] 1 S.C.R. 769, 2002 SCC 23 is a leading decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on whether preference on basis of citizenship infringed equality guarantee under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms...
(a Canadian Supreme Court case ruling on foreign worker status)
- Schengen Agreement
The Schengen Agreement is a treaty signed on 14 June 1985 near the town of Schengen in Luxembourg, between five of the ten member states of the European Economic Community. It was supplemented by the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement 5 years later...
(an EUThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
agreement to open borders)
- Sweatshop
Sweatshop is a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have...
- Third Country National
Third Country National is a term often used in the context of migration, referring to individuals who are in transit and/or applying for visas in countries that are not their country of origin , in order to go to destination countries that is likewise not their country of origin...
External links