Foreign Contractors Taking Jobs From Iraqis

Thousands of foreign workers came to Iraq after the 2003 invasion as employees for foreign companies contracted by U.S. forces, mostly working inside U.S. military bases. After 2007, private Iraqi employment agencies imported thousands more. But with the official unemployment rate at 15 percent and another 28 percent in part-time jobs, the government plans to deport illegal foreigners. Many of the private agencies stopped work after Iraq halted visas for foreign workers on January 1. With Iraq trying to recover from years of war, destruction and depredation, securing a scarce job is increasingly a priority for many Iraqis.

"We have started developing a mechanism to deport foreign labourers who entered Iraq illegally," Aziz Ibrahim, general director of the labour office at the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry, told Reuters in an interview. No one knows how many illegal workers entered Iraq or stayed after working for foreign firms that left when their contracts expired, but Ibrahim estimates the number in the thousands. The government is only issuing work permits to workers at foreign firms that hire at least 50 percent Iraqis for their work force, officials said. Firms importing labour must pay $5,000 for each worker to a fund to help jobless Iraqis with loans and benefits. Thousands of foreigners, mainly from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, and some African nations, work as cleaners and labourers in restaurants, shops, hospitals and hotels.

Fairouz Jubidali, a 19-year-old Bangladeshi who came to Iraq in 2009 through a Bangladeshi job agency, said he paid $4,500 to obtain work for three years. He earns $300 a month cleaning, stocking and selling at a Baghdad food store. He says he was duped.

"I was deceived by the agency. They did not tell me that I would go to Iraq," he said. "I thought I was going to Gulf states. When my contract expires I will leave Iraq because the situation is not safe."

Foreign workers complain they are subjected to humiliating conditions and employers sometimes withhold or delay pay. They have no recourse because they are working illegally. Recently, 30 Sri Lankans working for a Lebanese firm building housing in Maysan province went on a hunger strike, and some threatened to hang themselves if they were not paid for two years' work. Anger over power outages, food ration shortages, corruption and government ineffectiveness is heating up the political climate in Iraq as it tries to shake off the legacy of years of violence, sanctions and economic decline. Despite its huge untapped oil and gas reserves and steadily rising oil output and revenue, 23 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, the planning ministry said. Ibrahim Jameel, the shop owner who employs Fairouz Jubidali, said deporting foreign workers will not solve joblessness.

"It is impossible to find Iraqis who accept this kind of work with such pay ... most unemployed Iraqis are university graduates," he said. Economic analysts played down the possible impact of the government's measures for unemployed Iraqis. Foreign workers are less costly than their Iraqi counterparts.

"It's not a major change or solution to unemployment because they are not competing for Iraqi jobs," said Salam Smeism, an economist and Iraqi bourse board member. But central government officials defend their measures against foreigners as necessary to ease chronic unemployment.

"Providing jobs for Iraqi unemployed is our duty. All these measures are to solve the unemployment crisis," Ibrahim said.               (From Foreign Policy Journal).