In The News

Vegetable Prices Set to Soar After Exodus of Illegals

August 8, 2002
When more than 320,000 illegal immigrants left Malaysia during a four month amnesty, the agricultural sector took a bad hit. Farms in Johor Baru and Bukit Kempas were left unattended or worse, completely weeded over. With supply down by 40 percent, officials fear that consumers in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore might have to pay 30 percent more for all their vegetables. Farmers say they hired illegal...

Gephardt Is Preparing a Measure to Legalize Illegal Immigrants

Carl Hulse July 23, 2002
The United States is home to millions of illegal immigrants, many of them from Mexico, who have become a major chunk of the American labor force. Before September 11, President Bush talked with Mexican President Vicente Fox about the possibility of granting amnesty to some of those immigrants, but heightened concerns about national security have left that plan hanging. Democrats in the House of...

Malaysian Employers Want Clampdown on Indonesian Workers Eased

Anon. February 17, 2002
“Malaysian employers have urged the government to relax a recent clampdown on Indonesian migrant labor sparked by workers rioting.” Though the government says that it will now only hire Indonesians for plantation and household work, Malaysian businesses noted that hiring non-Indonesians will not prevent further riots and will create further difficulties in language and cultural integration. In a...

China Under Pressure to Deal with 170 million Jobless

Mary Kwang February 8, 2002
As rural workers flock to the cities, unemployment in China seems unlikely to decline from its current level of 13 percent. The recent WTO membership is not a solution since most new jobs are expected to be in the professional sector. Most of the jobless come from rural areas where they make up 20 percent of the population. While government hopes that foreign companies and private investors will...