For Many Migrants, the United Arab Emirates is Not What It Seems, pt.1

This essay didn't fit into one post, so I've split it into multiple ones.

Most people envision the United Arab Emirates as a prosperous country, populated by some of the wealthiest people in the world. The gleaming buildings of Dubai, however, present a dark reality – they were built and are maintained by poor economic migrants who live difficult lives. Due to the global economic recession, these workers are now losing their jobs. This topic is of interest as the media rarely examines the serious effects of the global recession on immigrant workers. Filipino immigrants, for example, who make up the largest portion of migrant workers, are stranded in the UAE with little money, no passports, and virtually no help from the UAE’s government or their own consulate. Is this so different than the plight of African slaves that were trapped in a foreign land several centuries ago?

People have been voluntarily emigrating from the Philippines since the 1970s – a time when well paying jobs became scarce due to a growth in population and poor economic management by the Filipino government. (Asis) Poor uneducated citizens, concerned with push factors such as a lack of jobs, slow urban development, and uneven wealth distribution, emigrated overseas in search of better wages and better overall life quality. (Philippine Migrants Society of Canada) In fact, the Filipino government encouraged emigration, in an effort to alleviate the large amounts of domestic job-seeking citizens. (Castles, pg. 323) Immigration to the UAE first started when the country became wealthy due to the discovery of large pockets of crude oil and natural gas. (Time, “Goodbye, Houston. Hello, Dubai”, pg. 14) As the energy industry of the UAE made it an economic giant, employment-seeking Filipinos noticed. Attracted by the pull factors of massive urban development and the prospect of an improved lifestyle, Filipinos emigrated to the UAE en masse. However, imperfections in this emigration flow quickly surfaced. Many perspective migrants unknowingly signed contracts with dubious employment agencies and found themselves thrust into situations completely different from what they had expected. Workers were assigned to work in dangerous construction projects and abusive households for up to 17 hours a day. (Irin, "Domestic Workers Face Abusive Employers") In addition, employment firms coerced the immigrants to pay debts of thousands of dollars in order to pay for their travel – despite earning only on average $175 monthly. (Human Rights Watch, pg. 7) After the immigrants realized that promises of higher wages were fallacious, they had no opportunities of leaving the UAE – their passports were confiscated when they entered the country by those untrustworthy employment agencies. (Human Rights Watch, pg. 38) These immigrants could not depend on any type of aid from UAE or the Filipino consulate, as both claimed to be overwhelmed by requests for financial and legal assistance. Nevertheless, thousands of economic migrants still flock to the UAE out of desperation for money, unaware of the consequences, and many are too poor to gain access to electronic or written sources that could inform them of the poor life quality other migrants have. (Time, “On the Road Again: The Global Recession Scatters Workers,” pg. 28)

Continued in For Many Migrants, the United Arab Emirates is Not What It Seems, pt. 2: http://current.com/items/91979043_for-many-migrants-the-united-arab-emirates-is-...