New immigration problems on the way?

I'm reporting from the beyond---well, from English Camp---to pass along what has already been posted by The Chosun Bimbo and Zen Kimchi. As per a press release from ATEK, a fledgling teachers' union here, the government is mulling more requirements for immigrants looking to work in South Korea. According to the release:

The bill seeks to establish the "legal basis to require foreigners applying for an employment visa to submit a criminal background check and health certificate."

Interesting, but we've already been subjected to this for a while. The reasoning for this latest activity?

"Nowadays, the number of foreigners working in Korea is increasing, but a good many [Korean: 상당수] have previous convictions for drug and sexual crimes or carry infectious diseases. As we require measures to deal with the threat they pose to our society's public order and our people's health, we herein prepare the legal basis to require that foreigners applying for an employment visa submit a criminal background check and a health certificate."

Christ Almighty. Commentary here from The Chosun Bimbo, The Metropolitician, and kimchi-icecream.

It remains to been what implications this will have for teachers, or for those on E-2 visas, especially since we've been subject to these measures since December, 2007. After all English teachers comprise a small percentage of foreigners in Korea, and in spite of the ugly rhetoric thrown our way, we're not the first demographic to come to mind when talking about AIDS and drugs. Likewise, it is the right of a country to screen its visitors however it sees fit, and trying to curtail drugs and crime isn't a bad aim. Drugs and crime are, after all, a threat to public order and health, and if some foreigners are engaging in these and other harmful activities, they must of course be stopped.

That said, there has been a long history of hate-mongering against and scapegoating of foreign English teachers here, and it has been pretty well demonstrated that foreigner drug- and crime-rates are greatly sensationalized. And you'll remember the moral panic of late-2007 was directed exclusively at teachers on E-2 visas, for no reason in particular. The man who triggered the scare was on an E-7 visa, after all, and you'd think that in spite of such vigilant citizens' groups and columnists that there'd be reports of E-2 teachers actually, like, doing the harmful things they're always accussed of. We read a lot about running drugs, committing sex crimes, falsifying academic records, and harming students, but those areas have heretofore been the specialty of Korean or ethnic Korean teachers.

The language above is similar to that in of 2007 when the latest moral panic started after the arrest of Christopher Paul Neil. Immigration said in December of that year:

The Korean Government will prevent illegal activities by verifying requirements of native English teacher and tighten their non-immigrant status [...] [and will] eradicate illegal activities of native English teachers who are causing social problems such as ineligible lectures, taking drugs and sex crimes. English teachers, who disturb social order during their staying in Korea such as illegal teaching, taking drugs and sex crimes, will be banned from entering South Korea.[...] [They will] prevent illegal English teaching activities and the taking of drugs and sexual harassment of English teachers, [...] teachers who disrupt the social order by taking drugs, committing sexual harassment and alcohol intoxication.

In response to this latest activity, ATEK has said in the above-mentioned release:

The Association for Teachers of English in Korea (ATEK) calls on the author(s) of this bill to provide their evidence that "a good many" (상당수) foreigners working in Korea have previous convictions for drug and sexual crimes or carry infectious diseases. Obviously, with the stringent checks being done on E-2 visa holders, they are not part of the "good many" foreigners mentioned. How many E-1, E-6, E-7, and/or C-4 visa holders have been discovered to have criminal convictions or infectious diseases? This evidence cannot be produced because it does not exist.

While ATEK has been getting some exposure, let's be honest and say they don't have the teeth to really do anything. Nor do they have the popularity, the trust, or the confidence to get anything from the foreign teaching community. Hence the need to post something here, and to direct you to other commentary from other teachers, because the most effective things we can do now is just raise awareness about things like this and the ridiculously insulting comments by the education Ministry official in charge of native teachers, for example, and negatively influencing not only the way we do our jobs, but they way we're perceived in society. Not as if those two things are unrelated, either.

Perhaps there's nothing bloggers or readers themselves can do, either, except inform themselves and their handlers about the facts, and refuse to submit to repeated, redundant checks. I would love for the men upstairs to produce evidence of this "good many" foreigners who are damaging Korea, just like I want to find a solid definition of "unqualified" as it's used to slam teachers, or an honest appraisal of Korean English teachers, but I know none of those things are coming. But repeated accusations---that we're unqualified, or criminals, or drug smugglers, or sexual predators---does nothing but reveal a xenophobia that apparently needs little to bring it to the fore. It also speaks volumes about the faith in "the system": after all we've been vetted by our embassies and by their immigration---all numerous times---yet we still have to counter these charges every few months.

For those keeping score at home, immigration has changed its policies repeatedly since implementing them in late-2007, in spite of the dangers posed by foreign teachers and interracial daters. The story has been how the Korean government has been imposing things willy-nilly without checking on the practicality of these moves. In December, 2007, Korea wanted the embassies in Seoul to provide criminal background checks for its citizens, even though the embassies neither performed those functions nor agreed to do so before the requirement was announced. In response to being told to fuck off, one Ministry of Justice spokesperson said of the embassies

I just don’t understand why they cannot make some exceptions to accommodate the needs of their own nationals. In Korea, criminal records can be easily obtained online. But they don’t have a centralized system.

The US Embassy even sent out an email to those on its mailing list in response to these unmeetable demands. An excerpt:

The U.S. Embassy website will also continue to be the best source of information about the services that we are able to provide under U.S. law and regulation.

You'll remember this summer I made a three-hour visit to Seoul to get an apostile for my criminal background check at the US Embassy, only to be told by Yeosu Immigration---in contradiction of what I'd been hearing from my supervisor for months---that I didn't need it. The costly and time-consuming in-person Embassy interview has been the target of much criticism and many jokes. In October we saw reported what we already could guess: immigration regulations were favoring ethnic Koreans, an article in which an immigration official said

We know there might be unqualified ethnic Koreans teaching English here, but you also need to understand there is no 100 percent perfect system.

Most recently it announced it required Vulnerable Sector Screenings of Canadians, although it made this decision without alerting the Canadian Embassy, thus resulting in chaos for its applicants and in a lot of misinformation. Turns out some of the services the Korean government was requiring of the embassy were not in fact available, and that according to an embassy email the VSS was not even approved for overseas use anyway. As I said in a Korea Times column on the topic, the constant changes reveal not only gross disorganization but a lack of focus which in turn tells us that the goals are far less important than the process.

Without even taking into account the poor exchange rate, all of this of course makes you wonder how Korea will attract foreign teachers to meet its demand. It's amusing that while you're reading about unqualified-this, unqualified-that, you also read about how districts plan to bring in loads more foreign teachers, apparently oblivious to what's going on elsewhere. But I'm not so sure the demand will be there for much longer. They're already going to import teachers from India and other countries that have English as a nominal official language. More telling is their planned introduction of a domestic-made English test to supplant the TOEFL and SAT, two tests they generally suck at. I wonder how much longer until the jig is up, until they realize that this just isn't working. I don't think they will ever come to that conclusion, though, and contradictory to the aims of foreign-language study, they'll look inward and come to blame foreign teachers for all the failures of English-language education, rather than looking at the issues with implementation. That's a pessimistic outlook anyway. Perhaps this is just one more step toward an idea I've been playing with the last month or two: just give up, make Japanese the required second language, and keep English as an elective for the students who want it.