Asian women trafficking boom

Asian women trafficking boom

By Santo Koesoebjono

WASENAAR, The Netherlands (JP): The young woman closed the
curtain abruptly when she recognized that the would-be client was
from her own country. She was not the only Indonesian working in
a lane exclusively offering Asian women in the red light district
of Amsterdam.

An agent exporting Indonesian women migrants to the Middle
East, who is now sending nurses to the Netherlands, confirmed
this observation. He once met an Indonesian woman in an escort
service. Many young women from Indonesia and other countries in
southern Asia and southeast Asia, as well as from Africa, Eastern
Europe and Latin America work in the sex industry.

Many are lured under the false pretext of work in glamorous
places. A representative of a sex workers' union said that the
business is always in need of something new. The market is vast
and it is common for workers to operate on a rotation system,
moving throughout different areas.

The illegal import of domestic workers from Indonesia is a big
business, responding to the rising demand for baby-sitters and
cleaners by Indonesian families and elderly people in The
Netherlands. Their wages are cheaper than legal workers.
Surprisingly some of these women even have a high school
education.

Most of the workers gave up their jobs to earn a higher income
in the Netherlands and, using a tourist visa, usually stay until
their passport expires after five years. As they do not register
the Indonesian and Dutch authorities know nothing about their
existence.

Moreover, they stay within their own circle and often their
passports are kept by their agents. Employers and employees
behave under the silent code of "you scratch my back, I'll
scratch yours". If workers are mistreated, they are not entitled
to any legal protection. This network of illegal workers is well
informed about the demand for workers, wages, where to stay, how
to get around and how to avoid official control.

In general female migrants have a better chance of getting a
job in Europe. They work as domestic workers, nannies, in
cleaning services, flower factories, in the hotel and restaurant
business, as nurses and so forth. Young women often get jobs in
the entertainment business, which mostly acts as a front for
prostitution.

Trafficking women is one of the hottest businesses in
southeast Asia. The women come from Indonesia, the Philippines,
Thailand and Vietnam.

It is a common practice for fellow countrymen to receive
migrants and help them get around. The women live in overcrowded
housing in popular areas of big cities and find jobs through
their informal network. Those who have settled in Europe often
invite their husbands to join them.

It is, however, more difficult for men to find jobs. Many of
them remain at home, taking care of the children and house while
the women are working. Men who cannot stand this reversal of
gender roles any longer, leave their wife, get hooked on drugs,
become involved illegal practices or return home.

Information on the living conditions here reaches family and
friends at home, as well as through the Internet. Shortage of
labor, and its perceived opportunities for a better life, is
frequently a powerful temptation for those in lesser developed
countries, even though wages are lower than that paid to
nationals or legal workers. The average income per capita in the
Netherlands is around US$23,000.

Even professionals like nurses, computer specialists or civil
engineers have become victims of this practice. Many Indonesian
men lured to work in the hotel or construction industries end up
washing dishes in hotels and working in trenches. Blinded by the
prospects of a wonderful life in Western Europe and North
America, they fall with eyes wide open into the trap set up by
exploiters and criminals specializing in human trafficking.

Those who manage to enter the dreamland, however, are not
poor, as the passage requires a huge sum of money. The prices
vary from US$6,000 to over $25,000 depending on the distance and
the country of destination.

"I sent my son to Western Europe, not because he didn't have a
job, but to earn more money and improve our situation," one man
said.

Indonesian nurses who recently came to the Netherlands have to
pay a monthly installment of around $200 for money advanced by
the agent.

Notwithstanding strict border control and admission
regulations, people can still sneak in to the European Union. The
coastline along Italy, France and Spain, and the borders of
eastern Germany and Austria, are thousands of kilometers long.

As legal entry has become increasingly difficult, seeking
asylum and attempting illegal entry are the two other options. In
the recent decade human traffickers have overwhelmed routes
traditionally used by people seeking asylum to channel bogus
asylum seekers, trying to enter the region for mainly economic
reasons, at the expense of genuine political refugees.

The huge wave of fake asylum seekers feed anti-migrant
sentiment and raise misleading impressions of foreigners.

The wave of bogus asylum seekers suggest that their countries
of origin cannot provide food and jobs for their own people and
cannot use them in development programs.

Some countries even implicitly push their people to find
employment overseas because remittances can be a precious source
of foreign exchange. By the mid-1990s the amount of remittances
worldwide was estimated at $74 billion.

The life of illegal migrants is often tragic. Their living
conditions are mostly poor and they often become targets of anti-
migrant actions. For most developing countries the loss of
skilled and educated labor is detrimental. Officials in the
countries of origin are often more keen to benefit from granting
permits to agencies exporting labor than to think about the fate
of these aspiring workers.

A few casualties are considered as nothing compared to the
many success stories of female domestic workers, as expressed by
officials in Indonesia's Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration
when discussing the problems of Indonesian women working in the
Middle East.

People will continue to move overseas illegally, irrespective
of border controls. The business of trafficking humans will keep
booming as long as officials continue to welcome the bribes of
traffickers; as long as differences in standards of living and
job opportunities between countries remain so vast; and while
cheap labor remains in such demand.

Indonesia remains one of these sources of cheap man -- and
woman -- power.

The writer, an economist and demographer based in The
Netherlands, is conducting research on migration.