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The construction sector is one of the main employers of hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers in Thailand. Photo: Pattarapong Chatpattarasill

Southeast Asia hosts nearly 10 million migrants, of whom roughly 7 million originate from countries within the region. The main component of migration involves the movement of lower-skilled labour, predominantly from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos to Thailand.

In Asean and around the world, labour migration has proved to be a force for good, rather than something to block. But its benefits to the region are often forgotten or overlooked, and the difficulties experienced by workers too often neglected.

"You can see how important labour migration has been for some countries," said Nissara Spence, regional research assistant with the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Most intra-regional migration involves a steady stream of willing lower-skilled workers who fill gaps in the job markets of host countries, many of which are now focusing on upgrading the skills of their own workers.

Robin Ramcharan, executive director of the Asia Centre, said labour migration in Asean brings economic benefits not only to host countries but also provides a steady stream of income back to workers' home countries within Asean.

"Broadly speaking, and going back over the last 20 years, I think labour migration has been very important for the economics of Asean," he told Asia Focus. "The contribution of migrants in general to their host countries is one thing, but then to their home economies it is also quite substantial."

Workers coming to Thailand from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar account for 58% of all migration within Asean, Ms Nissara noted. They accept jobs that natives of host countries are no longer willing to do, in construction, fishing, domestic work and other services. "In Singapore alone, 40% of the workforce is made up of migrant workers," she said.

Ageing populations around the region are further shrinking the pool of available workers, especially in more developed countries, creating more demand for migrants.

"In Thailand, 11% of the population is 65 or over. That's about 7.5 million people," she said.

"But in addition to filling labour shortages in host countries, migrant workers also contribute to increasing capital and promoting trade," Ms Nissara added. "Some may not earn enough to pay tax in the countries of destination, but they are still consumers and spend income on living in that country."

In addition to spending money on food, rent and clothing in host countries, migrants make major contributions to their home countries through remittances. Around 75% of Myanmar migrants send remittances back home, said Ms Nissara.

"Remittances can be used to reduce poverty back home as well as an indispensable source of income for families in countries of origin," she said. "These funds are often used for food, education and healthcare for their families."

Dr Ramcharan agreed, saying remittances in some countries were "quite substantial" reaching as much as 6-7% of gross domestic product in the Philippines, for example.

The construction sector is one of the main employers of hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers in Thailand. Photo: Pattarapong Chatpattarasill
ASSOCIATED PROBLEMS
Given how valuable a resource a large, willing and flexible migrant workforce can be, it is disappointing that workers encounter so many difficulties, notably exploitation by recruiters and lack of labour protection.

"Not all migrants are protected under national labour laws. For example, domestic workers often do not have the same protections because the workplace is a private home and outside of the scope of labour inspectors. This equally holds true for those workers who are employed informally," said Ms Nissara.

Many arrive through irregular channels, without the necessary documents and lacking knowledge about how to access the necessary information. Accordingly, exploitation is not uncommon.

"You potentially could see abusive practices such as withheld pay, or underpayment compared to the minimum wage or compared to what they were told they would be paid," said Joshua Hart, project officer (labour migration) with the IOM in Thailand. Withholding of documents is common, with many workers too afraid, or unsure how, to seek help out of fear of retribution or arrest and possibly deportation.

This creates an atmosphere of dependency, with many reliant on their employers to access certain services. "Imagine you have come to Thailand and all of your identification -- your passport -- has been withheld by your employer," Ms Nissara illustrated. "Additionally, for them then to access healthcare, they will have to rely on employers to take them."

Some workers are forced to pay off existing or fabricated debts before receiving their passports back. "We really have to regulate this better," said Dr Ramcharan. "Singapore confronted this early on and I think they have taken measures to be fair and control recruiters and employers."

These problems are not limited to workers but can also affect heir family members. "For example, sometimes migrant workers bring their families as well. The worker may have access to healthcare but their family members may not," Ms Nissara explained. "There are still gaps -- the protection of migrant workers itself is not fully comprehensive, let alone for the family members who also come."

Dr Ramcharan said the lack of consistent rules across the region for labour migrants is worrying.

"From the departure stage to the arrival stage for migrants, there are different rules spread out," he said. "And coming from a classic customary international law, do you have a right to leave your country? Yes you do. But, then do you have a right to enter another? No."

For that reason, he believes, "a broader normative framework" is needed, especially for undocumented workers, to prevent abuses.
AWARENESS
Raising awareness, both among the wider public about the benefits of labour migration and within the migrant worker community, is essential as Asean becomes more integrated.

Xenophobia, while not widespread, still exists and needs to be addressed, Ms Nissara explained. "In one way, people may believe that migrant workers are coming in take their jobs. But in reality, they complement the market and provide more job opportunities for locals.

"For example, in Thailand and Malaysia, migrant workers come to work in agriculture and actually increase jobs for the local population who are employed in related areas such as food processing, transport and sales."

Misconceptions and scaremongering about migrants need to be tackled more seriously, Dr Ramcharan agreed.

"Generally speaking, one can never do enough to emphasise how important these people are to any country's economy," he said. "They fill the jobs that many locals will not do."

Previous IOM publications enforce the idea that many people still view migration, and migrant workers, as something to curtail rather than welcome and celebrate. The IOM's 2015 report, "How the World Views Migrants", asked respondents whether they wanted migration to decrease, stay the same or increase, and whether people believed that migrants were taking jobs from the local population.

In all of Southeast Asia, 40% of respondents said they wanted migration to decrease, above the global average of 34%. It was the most popular of the three answers.

To help promote inclusion and clarity, the IOM has created the "I am a Migrant" web platform. It showcases stories of migrant workers in the hope of portraying them as workers, parents and friends, rather than simply labour.

For example, Anand, as shown on the website, is a lifting supervisor from India who currently works in Singapore. With two daughters, he works six days a week. Anand has been living and working in Singapore for four years and has "only positive observations of Singapore".

Labour attaches at consulates, with The Philippines setting a good example at its diplomatic missions, also help raise awareness. In this case however, the focus is on the migrant workers, informing them of their rights and designated provisions.

"The role of the consulate is very important," Dr Ramcharan said, noting how consulates of The Philippines ensure that labour attaches operating in host countries provide adequate information and help to migrant workers.

Such efforts are intended to safeguard the protection of Philippine nationals working abroad, by doing raising awareness of what services they can access and what rights they have.

By providing legal and welfare assistance, promoting available employment opportunities and helping national governments create and implement better policies toward migrant workers, labour attaches thus play a vital role within the migration sphere.

Migrant workers in the seafood-processing hub of Samut Sakhon show off identification cards issued under a 2014 programme to legalise foreign labourers. Photo: Pattanapong Hirunard

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The construction sector is one of the main employers of hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers in Thailand. Photo: Pattarapong Chatpattarasill Southeast Asia hosts nearly 10 million migrants, of whom roughly 7 million originate from countries within the region. The main component of migration involves the movement of lower-skilled labour, predominantly from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos to Thailand.

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Photographer: Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. has been roiled by debates over immigration. Japan has the opposite problem -- not enough debate. Immigration is happening, and no one is talking about it or preparing to deal with it.

Americans tend to use Japan as an example of a country that doesn't take in immigrants. For example, my Bloomberg View colleague Justin Fox recently wrote that "politicians have so far been unwilling to allow immigration to take up the slack" of an aging population. It's true that Japan has a small foreign-born population compared to other countries:

Mostly Locals

Foreign nationals as share of population in 2013

Source: Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development

But this image of Japan as a closed country gets two things wrong.

First of all, Japan doesn't actually do much to keep out immigrants. The country has no legal limits on either the number of people who can get work visas there, the number of people who can get permanent residency, or the number who can become naturalized citizens. This stands in contrast to the U.S., which still imposes legal limits on immigration. And Japan, unlike most countries, doesn't require permanent residency as a prerequisite for becoming a naturalized citizen. It's true that Japan, like most countries, doesn't have birthright citizenship. Japan also takes very few refugees. But in general, Japan has unusually lax immigration controls. The reason for Japan's low immigration levels is that relatively few foreigners have chosen to move there.

Second of all, Japan's immigration numbers have risen substantially in recent years:

Foreigners Slow Japan's Population Decline

Change in number of people resident in Japan

Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and Ministry of Justice.

The country's foreign-born population grew by about 150,000 in 2016, to a total of 2.3 million, with most of the increase coming from other countries in Asia. That's about three-quarters as many as Canada. Japan's population is much larger, so it's not about to enter the ranks of high-immigration countries, but it's definitely not the walled garden many in the U.S. make it out to be.

Walking around Tokyo these days, the change is palpable. Chinese exchange students work the cash registers at convenience stores and the reception desks at hotels. Indian salespeople offer English-language help at electronics stores. Brazilian chefs serve up grilled chicken at restaurants, Africans sell clothing on the street in youth districts, and Canadian and American finance workers shuffle around ritzy neighborhoods in flip-flops and shorts.

Many believe that immigration will be a positive for Japan. It will certainly help slow the decline of the country's aging population, giving companies more of a reason to invest there, and helping to keep the pension and healthcare systems funded. Skilled immigrants will also help Japanese technology companies compete in global markets and improve its financial system.

But all is not well in the world of Japanese immigration. Unlike Canada or other high-immigration countries, neither Japan's leaders nor its people seem prepared to deal with the flow of newcomers in a proactive way.

When I talk to Japanese government workers, and to people involved in immigration policy, I get the distinct sense that the influx of foreigners is seen as a temporary phenomenon. The government simply expects most foreign workers to stay in the country for only a short time, and then leave -- a rotating workforce that gets constantly switched out. Some believe that the new arrivals will return to their home countries after the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Others insist that Japan isn't the type of place that foreigners want to move to.

On the policy front, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration has made one very good step, which is to introduce a Canada-style points-based system for skilled immigrants. That's good, because skilled workers tend to have an easier time integrating into local cultures, and are less likely to be blamed if wages fall for the working class.

But most of the government's efforts involve guest-worker programs. Guest workers generally take low-earning, low-productivity jobs. Worse, guest workers are temporary residents, with less of a connection to Japanese culture, fewer local ties and poorer language skills. They will therefore be slower to integrate. And if Japan suffers a disaster, war, or economic downturn, these workers could be vulnerable to scapegoating. That in turn lead to an exodus of workers, depriving Japanese companies of labor they had counted on and exacerbating the economic pain. It would also damage the lives of many of these vulnerable workers, many of whom will by that time have spouses and children in Japan. An anti-immigrant backlash in Japan could even lead to xenophobic leaders taking power -- think Donald Trump with Japanese characteristics.

Instead of assuming that foreign workers are temporary residents who will eventually depart, Japan's leaders should plan for the reality that many will stay. This means more active programs of assimilation, including making sure that the children of immigrants attend Japanese schools. It also means more permanent residents and fewer guest workers, and more of a shift toward skills-based immigration. Making room for permanent residents will require government policies like language education, assistance with naturalization and urban planning to ensure adequate housing.

So there is much to be done. If managed wisely, immigration can be a boon for Japan. But if allowed to proceed in an ad hoc manner, it could present dangers in the years to come.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
at nsmith150@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

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How Japan Needs to Change to Welcome Immigrants

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The U.S. has been roiled by debates over immigration. Japan has the opposite problem -- not enough debate. Immigration is happening, and no one is talking about it or preparing to deal with it. Americans tend to use Japan as an example of a country that doesn't take in immigrants.

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Change the way investors get their money

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Change the way investors get their money

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If you've hated being forced to wait three days after selling a well-performing (or losing) investment to get your cash, you will likely get it a bit faster now.

As of Tuesday, most broker-dealer securities transactions - i.e., stocks, corporate and municipal bonds, and exchange-traded funds - must settle within two business days instead of three. This means if you sell a stock on Monday, the proceeds will be available on Wednesday. It also means if you execute a stock buy, you need to fund the purchase within two business days.

While many mutual funds already settle within one business day, the rule change generally will apply to those that were on a three-day schedule. Treasury bonds also already settled in one day.

Zach Gibson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Securities and Exchange Commission said the rule change, which was finalized earlier this year, is partly intended to reduce risk to investors. The longer a transaction takes to settle, the greater the chance that one party might not deliver, which on a large scale can affect the broader market.

"Bottom line, shorter trade settlement means less risk to investors that something could come up to disrupt a trade," said Tom Price, managing director of technology and operations at brokerage trade group SIFMA and co-chair of the committee that worked closely on the securities industry's transition to the two-day settlement.

"Bottom line, shorter trade settlement means less risk to investors that something could come up to disrupt a trade." -Tom Price, managing director of technology and operations at SIFMA

The last time the time frame was changed was in 1995, when the SEC reduced it to three days from five days.

Since then, the industry has been working toward trimming it even more. There were some calls to tighten the window to one business day, although the SEC said doing so could create new problems related to risk and cost for transactions involving foreign financial markets.

"The net effect is to reduce overall risk in the system and costs for all market participants, while aligning the U.S. with other global markets that are already at [two-day settlements]," Price said.

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This change allows investors to get their money faster

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you've hated being forced to wait three days after selling a well-performing (or losing) investment to get your cash, you will likely get it a bit faster now. As of Tuesday, most broker-dealer securities transactions - i.e., stocks, corporate and municipal bonds, and exchange-traded funds - must settle within two business days instead of three.

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If you listen to Apple's inflationary marketing spiel, every time the company launches a new iPhone, it "changes everything." The prosaic truth, however, is that most iPhone releases aren't all that revolutionary. Apple, like everyone else, sometimes takes multiple iterations to complete its most ambitious goals. But as we face up to the culmination of another year of hyped-up iPhone speculation, I do see three particular ways in which the iPhone 8 (or whatever Apple calls its new flagship) will indeed be the harbinger of massive and irrevocable change.

Phone screens

Most Verge readers will by now be fully habituated to seeing phones like the Galaxy S8 and Note 8, LG G6 and V30, or the Mi Mix and Essential Phone showing off a modern phone design with negligible bezels around the screen. But while geeks can already take them for granted, the vast majority of people still haven't seen one of these bezel-deprived screens in person, and their first encounter with one will be - prepare to feign surprise - on the iPhone 8.

The new iPhone will be the biggest reconfiguration of the front of Apple's smartphone since its inception a decade ago. The mechanical home button was ditched last year in favor of a fixed pad with haptic feedback, and this year Apple is removing the whole thing. The iconic outline of an iPhone, featuring two big bars of bezel at top and bottom and a round home button, is going to be no more. We're all underestimating just how massive a change this will be, and how strong the reaction to it will be. Those of us in the know have grown blasé about bezel-less screens, while most people just aren't yet aware of what's coming from Apple.

Whether Samsung likes it or not, September 12th will be the date when the majority of people first learn about bezel-less screens. So yes, for many people, Apple will end up having "invented" the new display form factor. An amusing parallel to the original iPhone: back then, LG beat Apple to market with a device with a full capacitive touchscreen, but it was terrible and mostly forgotten. LG also beat Apple to market with multiple phones with a minimal bezel this year, of which only the latest V30 stands a chance to be remembered.

Apple's dramatic reconfiguration of the iPhone will reset expectations for all phones

In any case, once Apple drops its hype-rogen bomb in a week's time, every person with even a passing interest in tech or smartphones will have the iPhone 8's bezel-starved look as their new paradigm for an ideal design. It won't take months or weeks for everyone to start demanding bezel-free phones, it'll be instant. Sony's still unreleased Xperia XZ1 models will sink out of sight and relevance, as if weighed down by their big bezels from circa 2012. Even the OnePlus and the HTC U11, two phones with plenty of reason to recommend them, will appear a step behind.

Individual opinions won't matter with this shift to trim bezels off the front of phones. It's happening, it's inevitable, and Apple's participation will turbocharge the whole thing. Everyone that hadn't already been working to beat Apple to the punch will have to hurry to catch up. In six months' time, when Mobile World Congress gives us our look at the next batch of smartphone launches, companies that still use bigger bezels around their screens will have to justify themselves. Another six months later, people will likely start hiding their older phone's bezels inside elaborate cases. By 2019, hipsters will probably start using "fat bezel" phones as a symbol of their rejection of the ultra-modern society.

Flagship prices

Same story as with displays: Apple's pricey new iPhone won't be an isolated exception, but rather it will be the foam at the top of a gradually building wave of change in the mobile industry. By most predictions, the new flagship iPhone will be priced somewhere in the vicinity of $1,000, probably starting just below that mark and topping out somewhere above it, subject to spec. This is going to be the biggest upward push that Apple has made with the price of its top iPhone model, though indications are that demand will still likely outstrip supply. I've gone into more depth on the potential reasons and justifications for a $1,000 phone price in my article discussing that pricing with respect to Samsung's Galaxy Note 8, which starts at $930 in the US.

The broader market trend in 2017 has been for all phones to get more expensive. Huawei's P9 was one of 2016's hidden gems, a bargain of a flagship phone that had design and performance far above its price point. The same is true of the OnePlus 3 and even its successor 3T, all great phones that were better than their price. Well, in 2017 Huawei priced the P10 at a much higher level, OnePlus pushed the OnePlus 5 into more familiar flagship pricing territory, and other companies like Sony moved to introduce super flagship models such as the Xperia XZ Premium.

Every smartphone maker has been drifting upward in price, and Apple is going to validate that trend

It's an irony of the tech industry that when innovation starts to slow down and easy upgrades are fewer and further between, prices go up instead of down. To achieve a bezel-less screen such as the one Samsung, LG, and soon Apple will tout as their unique selling point, it takes years of research and development work. Most companies have decided that it's in their best interest to move up the smartphone food chain - by adding dual cameras or using exotic materials like ceramic and titanium, as with the Essential Phone - than to continue trying to eke out ever smaller upgrades every year at more affordable prices. That's the simple reality of the phone market today, and it's the thing Apple's new iPhone pricing will reiterate to a wider audience.

Apple's elevated iPhone pricing is likely to grant some much-needed respite to its Android competitors. I myself have been hard on Huawei and OnePlus for abandoning their faithful fans who expect them to keep producing devices at a certain price point - but if Apple is stretching the smartphone market up into previously unexplored cost ranges, everyone else starts to look a little better by comparison. The Galaxy Note 8 is going to hit retail shelves at roughly the same time as Apple's new iPhones, and its own lofty price won't look out of place when compared against the nearest Apple alternative.

Augmented reality

When it comes to bezel-free screens and more expensive smartphones, you could argue that those trends would have materialized with or without Apple's participation. In both cases, it seems like broader technological and economic developments were going to force the market in a certain direction, and Apple's involvement is more an accelerator than a cause. But if you want a change that Apple is likely to drive from the ground up, look no further than augmented reality.

The ARKit toolset for creating AR experiences that Apple unveiled as part of its new iOS 11 is a massive upgrade over anything else that's come before it. That operating system will come preloaded on the iPhone 8 and will be distributed to the majority of iPhones already in use, making for an immediate user base of hundreds of millions of people. But its core advantage is that it doesn't require special hardware like the Google Tango system, ARKit apps just work with your regular iPhone or iPad camera. It's augmented reality done in the most unintrusive way possible, and I foresee it being a runaway success because of how well it will synergize with Apple's new bezel-less screen and because of how good the early attempts with it have been.

ARKit has the potential to be the App Store of augmented reality. Nokia and Sony Ericsson had apps before the iPhone, many of which were useful and fun, but it was Apple that truly delivered on the promise of a coherent and comprehensive mobile app store. Instagram would never have become a billion-dollar business if it had to run on Nokia's Symbian platforms. The same is true of AR apps: we've had sputtering attempts at making them a mainstream thing for at least a decade, and what's needed now is a leader to organize and systematize AR into a coherent system. Who better than Apple for such a task?

Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly expressed his belief that " augmented reality will be bigger than virtual reality," and with the instant user base that the iPhone promises to ARKit developers, it's easy to foresee AR taking off with the launch of the iPhone 8 and iOS 11. Google is certainly hurrying to keep pace, recently introducing its own competing offering in ARCore. Joost van Dreunen, CEO of SuperData Research, has noted that it "seems like augmented reality is the new frontier for big tech firms," while also underlining just how much bigger Apple's ARKit will be relative to ARCore: "Just to be clear here, Google is aiming to have ARCore operational on 100M units at the end of the preview, but Apple is likely to crush that number five-fold."

The scale of Apple's existing user base and the continuity in software that the company has managed to maintain over so many years are both going to augment its efforts at making AR a big thing in 2017. It's obvious there will be an initial burst of enthusiasm from unsuspecting users, but then it will be up to developers to convert that into long-lasting change by delivering AR apps with more substantive utility. The original iPhone was also not the finished article in its first generation, and it took Apple a few years to perfect it, but we celebrate it now as the start of the iPhone transformation. The same could be true with ARKit on the new iPhones.

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Three things that will never be the same after the iPhone 8

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you listen to Apple's inflationary marketing spiel, every time the company launches a new iPhone, it "changes everything." The prosaic truth, however, is that most iPhone releases aren't all that revolutionary. Apple, like everyone else, sometimes takes multiple iterations to complete its most ambitious goals.