Outdated employment laws cause thousands of migrant workers to be sent back home

Posted on : 2019-10-22 17:49 KST Modified on : 2019-10-22 17:49 KST
Many workers exceed job-seeking deadline via errors of employers or job centers
Migrant workers rally in front of Seoul Finance Center on Oct. 20 to demand protections on migrant workers’ rights. (Park Jong-shik, staff photographer)
Migrant workers rally in front of Seoul Finance Center on Oct. 20 to demand protections on migrant workers’ rights. (Park Jong-shik, staff photographer)

In February 2015, a migrant worker from Bangladesh identified as “M” who had left his job was put in touch with a new company by a Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) employment center. After an interview, M decided to take the job – one day before the expiration of the three-month job-seeking period granted to migrant workers by the government. He frantically visited the center to get an employment permit form, but the official in charge was away on business. M was forced to come back to the center again the following day, only to be told that his employment was not approved. His job-seeking period had expired the previous day. Through no fault of his own, M had become an unregistered (illegal) sojourner.

Observers are arguing that the more stringent workplace change conditions under the employment permit system, which manages the arrivals and employment of migrant workers, is turning lawfully admitted migrant workers into illegal aliens. According to the Immigration Control Act, a migrant worker must apply for a workplace change within one month of the date his or her existing employment contract ends, and must sign a contract with a new company within three months of the date he or she applies for the workplace change. In the process, migrant workers have had to contend with half-hearted job placement efforts by employment centers. More and more cases are ending up like M’s, where workers have their sojourn status canceled and are forced to leave South Korea when they miss the deadline by even a day.

No. of migrant workers who exceed sojourn deadline
No. of migrant workers who exceed sojourn deadline

According to MOEL data received on Oct. 20 by Han Jeoung-ae, a Democratic Party lawmaker and member of the National Assembly Environment and Labor Committee, a total of 28,709 migrant workers between 2015 and August of this year became unregistered sojourners after missing the deadlines for their workplace change application and job-seeking periods. The number of foreign workers missing the workplace change application deadline rose from 3,407 in 2015 to 4,582 as of August this year, while the number missing their job-seeking deadline increased from 1,205 to 1,215 over the same period.

Because of the requirement that previous employers approve the workplace change, some migrant workers are ending up with unregistered status through no fault of their own. A migrant worker from Uzbekistan identified as “K” entered South Korea through the employment permit system and signed a contract with a new workplace in February 2016 after the completion of their contracted period with a previous one – only to be belatedly informed in July 2017 that their sojourn status had been revoked. The reason given was that the new employer had failed to go through the necessary administrative procedures, including issuance of an employment permit. On Oct. 18, the central South Korea branch office of MOEL accepted a National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) recommendation that lawful sojourn status be granted to a Mongolian worker who had unintentionally missed the deadline for registering new employment. The migrant worker who submitted the NHRCK petition had become an unregistered sojourner after exceeding the three-month deadline for finding new employment by three days due to errors committed by the employer and employment center

Some argue that even when migrant workers do rush to find new jobs within the allotted period, they have been hamstrung by the inconsiderate information given to them by the employment centers responsible for putting them in touch with new workplaces. Another worker from Uzbekistan identified as “H” went to interview at a factory after receiving an employment center text, only to find out that the workplace in question produced pork sausage. H is a Muslim who does not consume pork for religious reasons. 

“Migrant workers entering [South Korea] through the employment permit system are being turned into unregistered sojourners due to the excessive constraints on workplace changes and lax job placement duty performance by employment centers,” said Han Jeoung-ae. 

“We need to come up with a new approach, including loosening the workplace change restrictions and freeing migrant workers to do their own job searching using their mobile phones and the internet,” she suggested. 

By Kwon Ji-dam, staff reporter 

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]

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