Falling through the cracks: Migrant workers

For workers with health bills, losing a job can cost far more than a monthly wage


For illegal migrant worker “Luis,” his current hospital stay for dialysis is a major financial worry.

Working without a visa and not covered by Korean National Health Insurance, the Filipino will have to pay for his latest round of treatment out of pocket.

“Right now I have to pay for my treatment. … All foreigners who have no visa should be covered under the insurance system. Because right now, foreigners who have no visa right now ― maybe they’ve lost their job ― they’ll pay the exact amount,” Luis, who doesn’t know what his final bill might come to, told The Korea Herald.

Luis initially worked legally at a shipyard after arriving in Korea under the Employment Permit System. But after four months of being given a basic monthly wage of 800,000 won, poor accommodation and lax safety equipment, Luis left to work illegally at a textile company.

He would have had to return to the Philippines to reapply for a work permit to continue working legally. Under the EPS system, it can take up to year after passing compulsory Korean Language Training for an applicant’s name to be added the list available to Korean employers.

With 166,518 illegal immigrants here as of June, according to Korea Immigration Service, Luis’ case is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Migrant Worker’s Health Association in Korea holds a check up session in Seongdong-gu in August. (Yonhap News)

Kim Mi-yeon of Seoul Migrant Workers Center says migrant workers who fall pregnant are particularly vulnerable, as they risk being fired and losing their legal work status ― and with it their health insurance.

“Employers don’t like pregnant women so they’re fired and the pregnant woman becomes illegal,” Kim told The Korea Herald, explaining how a migrant worker’s visa is tied to their place of employment.

Kim says that one eight-months-pregnant Vietnamese migrant worker she encountered recently is coming to the end of her contract and has until December to find another job to remain in the country legally.

But with just weeks until the baby is due, Kim says she will find it almost impossible to find a legitimate job and stay insured.

Kim claimed that in another case an undocumented Vietnamese couple paid an under-the-table fee to staff at their embassy to arrange for someone to pose as their newborn child’s mother and bring it back to Vietnam.

Feeling they could not safeguard their child’s health without insurance, they decided their child would be better off living with its grandparents in Vietnam, but were unable to get time off work to take it themselves.

A spokesman for the embassy denied it would ever facilitate such a deal and said it paid great attention to protecting the rights of its citizens. He added it had strict measures in place to ensure that only birth parents could take a child out of the country, including a requirement to produce the birth certificate and paternity and maternity tests.

To mitigate the costs uninsured migrants have to bear, Kim’s center works with about 50 hospitals in Seoul to subsidize their care.

“The doctors agree we want to help migrants so they give migrants some discounts … If they get some operation we refund 30 percent or 40 percent,” she said.

According to Kim, many illegal migrant workers put off treatment for minor medical conditions because of cost concerns. It is often when their condition has become serious, and more and expensive to treat, that they do end up in hospital.

Migrant workers who seek help from people like Kim having runs-ins with the immigration authorities is a further challenge. Kim says inspectors have tried to catch illegal workers at one of SMWC’s affiliated centers for Bangladeshi migrant workers near Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province.

“Sometimes immigration staff hide around our office … The government doesn’t like our center, NGO, but they need our center because they cannot cover (migrants’ needs), so we do so instead of the government,” she said.

Kim believes visa extensions for pregnant workers and free yearly medical checkups for those working illegally are two small but crucial measures the government should implement, especially considering the toll migrant workers’ often punishing work schedules can take on their health.

“They work over 20 hours a day and their working conditions are very bad so they need physical checkups.”

By John Power  (john.power@heraldcorp.com)