Illegal immigrants – or labour tourists

“Apart from the large number of legal workers, the total number of illegal workers is also believed to be quite significant,” say researchers Victor Zheng and Po-san Wan.

“Since the DSEC [Statistics and Census Bureau] does not keep records on this matter, we cannot obtain a full picture of this aspect of the labour situation in Macau. However, most semi-skilled and unskilled local workers generally believe that non-resident workers not only steal their jobs but also pull down their salaries and wages,” they write. “They have also accused the SAR government of colluding with tycoons in turning a blind eye to what they see as a very obvious problem.”

In other words, state the authors of the book Gambling Dynamism, the Macao Miracle, “many local workers think that the SAR government has not taken any real measures to solve the problem because of strong pressure from heavy-weight capitalists.”

Even if we just consider efforts made by the various Macau Governments in the last five years, for example, this criticism seems unfair.

Last November, for example, a rule came into effect obliging non-residents who enter or remain in Macau to prove they have “sufficient” resources to continuously meet their essential needs: anyone wishing to stay in Macau for a week must have MOP5,000, and anyone wishing to stay in the city for more than 21 days must have MOP20,000.

In 2000, the government started to force non-resident workers (TNRs, the acronym in Portuguese) who wanted to change work in Macau to leave the Region and restart the process of obtaining entry permits for work purposes – a decision that brought many difficulties to domestic workers of non-Chinese origin, for example.

Source: https://www.macaubusiness.com/special-report-illegal-immigrants-or-labour-tourists/