VNExpress-Sept 6
Minh Tuan, a Vietnamese undocumented worker in Taiwan, never goes to the hospital for fear of apprehension and deportation. If he is caught and sent back to Vietnam, he fears he will not be able to pay back the money he borrowed to pay VND200 million ($8,540) as brokerage to a labor export company more than two years for getting a job in Taiwan. At the time all he wanted was to be able to work as many overtime shifts as possible so that he can pay off the debts. But because of the Covid-19 outbreak and the fact that his employer did not let him work overtime, he lost out on some potential earnings. Meanwhile, out of his monthly basic salary of TWD25,000 ($808.70), he had to pay TWD16,000 for food, lodging, brokerage, and insurance premiums, leaving him with only TWD9,000–10,000 to spend, save or send home, “even less than the salary Vietnamese workers get if they work overtime back home.” He quit his contracted job and became an illegal worker, reasoning that he would only have to pay for food and rent and not insurance premiums and commissions. He is constantly worried about being detained or deported by immigration authorities. Tuan is one of many Vietnamese to work without legal documents in foreign countries because they can earn more money in informal jobs than in permitted and legitimate companies. Over 25,000 Vietnamese living overseas have been deported for breaking local laws since 2018, according to a public security ministry statement in June. On August 19 the South Korean Ministry of Justice reported that in the previous two months it had apprehended 642 undocumented foreign workers, 49 of them Vietnamese. In Japan too, there were 7,167 reported cases of people absconding to work illegally last year, more than 60% being trainees from Vietnam, Nikkei Asia said in a July article. Though no exact statistics are available, thousands of Vietnamese are thought to be working illegally in places like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the U.S., and Europe. Read more at: https://e.vnexpress.net/news/trend/vietnamese-illegal-workers-abroad-risk-all-to-make-a-living-4507926.html
