Undocumented Workers Fall Prey Easily To Recruitment Scams And Human Trafficking

A version of this letter was published in The Straits Times on 10 August 2010.

I refer to the article 'Broken dreams, tough lives for overstayers' by By Teh Joo Lin , Aug 2, 2010. We would like to commend the Straits Times for documenting the lives of 'overstayers'. It has  given readers a peek into the thoughts and perspectives of undocumented migrants in Singapore, whose experiences are often kept out of public and mainstream consciousness. We use the term 'undocumented' rather than ‘illegal’ because we believe that a person's immigration status should not be a criminal offence.

Over the years, HOME has met many workers who have been deceived and exploited by unscrupulous agents after paying them hefty recruitment fees, only to find that the jobs that were promised to them were either non existent or ‘illegal’. Some agents take the worker's passport and disappear without a trace, leaving the worker to fend for himself. Other recruitment agents deploy these workers to work for several employers without paying them a single cent after that. They are easily exploited because employers are aware that undocumented migrants fear being arrested and deported. Securing a decent place to live in is another challenge since it is an offence to harbour undocumented migrants in Singapore. As a result, most of them have to endure squalid living conditions. Many are also reluctant to visit to the doctor or go to a hospital when they are sick or injured at work because they are afraid of being caught.

The US State Department's Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report recently placed Singapore on the Tier 2 watch list in its treatment of persons who have been trafficked. There is no doubt that a significant number of undocumented migrants are victims of human trafficking. The absence of internationally accepted anti-human trafficking laws in Singapore has meant that migrants who have been trafficked are treated as immigration offenders, rather than persons who have been victims of scams and exploitation. There is also a mandatory caning sentence if they are caught. We need to ask ourselves if it is right to impose such a degrading and tortuous form of punishment on poor economic migrants who have been tricked by recruitment agents out to make a quick buck at the expense of a worker's vulnerability.

Singapore’s open borders and liberal immigration policies has made it an attractive destination for migrants. However, it has also made it easy for traffickers to ply their trade. We need to strengthen our laws to prosecute human traffickers and provide better protection for trafficked persons