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Bangladesh. Bangladeshi migrants are preferred by some foreign employers because of their willingness to work for low wages, usually $150 to $250 a month. However, the global recession is reducing deployments of Bangladeshis to foreign jobs. Between January and September 2009, some 358,000 Bangladeshi migrants went abroad, down almost 50 percent from 689,000 in those months of the previous year.

Remittances for the fiscal year July 2008 to June 2009 were $9.7 billion, up over 20 percent from the year earlier. In 2008, a record of 875,000 Bangladeshis went abroad to work, up from 832,000 in 2007.

A 2007 World Bank survey found that Bangladeshi migrants are mostly young men with seven years? schooling who work in Gulf countries for about six years. They paid an average 161,000 taka ($2,300) to go abroad; half relied on their own savings or family and friends to finance migration. The migrants remitted an average 102,000 taka ($1,480) a year, and the survey found that households receiving remittances had a better diet and higher expenditures on farm inputs such as fertilizer than households that did not receive remittances. The report recommended policies to reduce the cost of going abroad, including the fees charged by recruiters and the cost of raising money to pay them.

Saudi Arabia has been the leading destination for Bangladeshi migrants. However, Saudi Arabia has reduced the number of work permits for Bangladeshis, in part because some of them become illegal. Many Bangladeshis incur debts of $2,500 to obtain three-year contracts under which they will earn less than $7,500. If they do not earn enough to repay their debts within three years, some stay and work illegally for even lower wages.

Libya has emerged as a new destination for Bangladeshi migrants. By some estimates, up to a third of Libya's six million residents are migrants, mostly from other African countries.

Bangladeshi recruiters are not allowed to travel to Libya to deal directly with Libyan employers. Instead of waiting for job offers, many buy them from Malaysia brokers who travel to Libya, purchase job offers, and resell them to Bangladeshi brokers. Many Bangladeshis report paying twice the government-set maximum charge of $1,220 for passports, visas, and travel to Libya with three-year contracts offering $200 to $300 a month.

Mauritius, an island country of 1.3 million, has about 20,000 workers from Bangladesh, China, India and other countries filling jobs in its garment factories. In July 2009, the government ordered 6,000 Bangladeshi migrants, including 4,000 employed in garment factories, to leave the country within six months in order to open jobs for local workers. About 11 percent of Mauritian jobs are in garments.

Bangladesh has established a minimum age of 21 for boys and 18 for girls to marry. However, many girls marry earlier. Some parents fear that the dowry price will rise with age--70 percent of Bangladeshi women marry before they are 20.

India. India reported a record $52 billion in remittances in 2008, double the $25 billion received in 2006 and almost four times the $14 billion in 2001. Remittances to India were twice remittances to Mexico.

India has several types of passports, and requires Indians with Emigration Check Required (ECR) passports headed to Middle Eastern countries to have the Protector of Emigrants check their contracts for foreign jobs. Women holding ECR passports and going abroad to work must be at least 30 and have their employment contracts verified by Indian missions in the country of employment. Minimum wages of $300 to $350 a month have been established for female domestic helpers.

About 70 percent of Indians, and 75 percent of poor Indians, live in rural areas--60 percent of Indians are employed in agriculture, which contributes 20 percent of GDP. A severe drought in summer 2009 has left many who depend on agriculture with severely reduced crops, putting some of those who borrowed money in a cycle of mounting debt. There is agreement that education in rural Indian must be improved to enable the children of farmers to find nonfarm jobs. To alleviate rural poverty, the government is expanding a program begun in 2005 that provides jobs lasting at least 100 days and paying 100 rupees ($2) a day to one person in every rural household.

India is in the midst of digitizing its land records, converting them from a system in which the person farming the land is presumed to be the owner to a system of government-issued land titles.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates visited India in July 2009 to help Microsoft win part of a contract to provide Indians with national ID cards. During the visit, he criticized the US government's unwillingness to adopt a national identity card.

Pakistan. Remittances to Pakistan rose over 20 percent to $7.8 billion in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009.

Nepal. The number of Nepalese workers leaving for foreign jobs fell 13 percent to 217,164 in 2008/09 from 249,051 in 2007/08. The leading destination was Qatar, which accepted 76,175 or 35 percent of the Nepalese going abroad. There were 300,000 Nepalese migrants in Qatar in 2009. Most Nepalese have three-year contracts.

Bed Prakash Lekhak, director of the Department of Foreign Employment (DOFE), said that over 95 percent of the Nepalese migrants were men. Until 2001/02, fewer than 100,000 Nepalese departed as migrants. Their number doubled to 204,000 in 2006/07; remittances are about 20 percent of Nepal's GDP.

The Nepal Labor Force Survey interviewed 16,000 households throughout 2008 and found that half of urban residents 15 and older, and a quarter of rural residents 15 and older, were un- or under-employed, with the highest rates among those 25- to 35-years old. About 74 percent of Nepalese are employed in agriculture. Over 30 percent of surveyed households received remittances that averaged 66,000 Rs ($860) a year; a sixth of remittances are from migrants who move but remain in Nepal.

Israel in August 2009 canceled the visas of 450 Nepalese slated to travel to the country, arguing that Nepalese recruiters sent underqualified workers and charged them too much, about 500,000 Rs ($6,400) each. Nepalese recruiters say most of these fees went to Israeli recruiters.

Sri Lanka. The main agency dealing with foreign workers going abroad to work is the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE). In 2007, the defense spokesperson, Keheliya Rambukwella, was named head of a newly created Ministry of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare (MFEPW) whose major component was the SLBFE.

In September 2009, reports charged that the SLBFE in 2009 required Kuwaiti employers of Sri Lankans to obtain health insurance for them via the Jordanian firm al Haqooq; Sri Lankan migrants had to show they had this insurance before leaving Sri Lanka. In most cases, Kuwaiti employers deducted the $180 cost of the insurance from the wages of Sri Lankan migrants, about a month's wages. An investigation found that al Haqooq bought the policies for $30, making a profit of $150 on each policy.

SLBFE employees in October 2009 won "police powers" in amendments to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) Act of 1985 to arrest workers who try to leave the country with false travel papers or without paying the required SLBFE fee. The amendments also require recruiters to have their ads offering foreign jobs approved by SLBFE before running them.

Critics argued that the new police powers are aimed at bolstering SLBFE coffers rather than protecting migrant workers. Human-rights advocates emphasize that SLBFE employees should not be able to arrest and detain foreigners attempting to leave the country if their only offense was failure to pay SLBFE fees.

The annual report on Sri Lankan migrant workers reported that 1.8 million Sri Lankans, equivalent to a quarter of Sri Lankan employment of 7.2 million, were abroad. Some 252,000 Sri Lankans went abroad in 2008, almost 700 a day; 93 percent went to Middle Eastern countries.

Remittances were 316 billion SL rupees in 2008, about $2.7 billion, almost as much as garment exports and 2.3 times tea exports.

Only 49 percent of those leaving in 2008 were women, the first time men outnumbered women among departing migrants for a decade. Over 88 percent of the 123,000 women leaving Sri Lanka were domestic workers; the government's goal is to reduce the share of female domestic workers among Sri Lankan migrants to 25 percent. Beginning in 2009, female domestic workers are to receive an 18-day pre-departure English and literacy program.

Another 59,400 departing migrants in 2008 were classified as unskilled, while 2,800 were classified as professionals. Almost all unskilled and professional migrants were men.

There were 626 licensed recruiters at the end of 2008; 60 percent were in Colombo. Most transmit the job orders they receive from foreign employers to "independent" sub-agents in the villages from which most migrants originate; licensed recruiters are not responsible for the promises and payments made in the villages.

Sri Lanka has been trying to send more workers to non-Gulf destinations. In 2008, 17 Sri Lankan workers were sent to Italy, 12 to the US, and eight to Switzerland. The Sri Lankan government hopes to send more workers to Libya, estimating that up to 100,000 Sri Lankans could eventually find employment there.

The SLBFE annual report emphasizes that Sri Lankan recruiters were often unable to find qualified candidates to fill foreign jobs. For example, fewer than 10 percent of the 6,900 job orders for professionals such as accountants and engineers were filled, as were less than 10 percent of the 11,300 job offers for mid-level managers and nurses. Similarly, only 10 percent of the 25,000 clerical jobs were filled, such as checkers, storekeepers and supervisors of janitors and others.

It should be noted that job order data inflate the number of foreign job offers received in Sri Lanka. For example, an order for 100 clerks may be sent to four recruiters, each of whom post it at the SLBFE, inflating the number of job orders.

About 11 percent of the 339,000 job orders for skilled workers were filled? most were for construction trades such as masons, welders and machine operators. About 20 percent of the 15,700 jobs for semi-skilled workers such as sales worker were filled, as were 22 percent of the 150,000 unskilled jobs for cleaners and laborers.

Finally, 19 percent of the 445,000 job orders for house maids were filled. Foreign employers may specify Christian or Muslim? a quarter of the jobs for Christian house maids were filled, but only three percent of those for Muslims.

Feizal Samath, "Right to Travel Under Threat from New Laws," IPS, October 9, 2010. SLBFE. 2009. Annual Statistical Report of Foreign Employment: 2008 www.slbfe.lk/article.php?article=51 Sharma, Manohar and Hassan Zaman. 2009. Who migrates overseas and is it worth their while? An assessment of household survey data from Bangladesh. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper. WPS5018. August.