Macau’s appointed leaders seem especially sensitive to populist fears on immigration
There’s a good chance that from the beginning of July this year, Vietnamese will need to obtain a visa prior to travel in order to enter Macau.
It may not matter much to the high net worth nationals of Vietnam, as they are likely also to have access to foreign passports from places such as the United States. Retrospectively imposing entry restrictions on nationals that were previously issued with visas on arrival does, though, arguably send out a mixed and potentially confusing message about Macau to the outside world.
Not very long ago, João Manuel Costa Antunes, director of the Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO), was positively encouraging Vietnamese nationals to come to Macau as tourists. That was shortly after casino revenue declined for the first time since 2005 following the double whammy of the world financial crisis, which came to a head in September 2008, and the Chinese central government’s imposition of escalating restrictions on the length and frequency of visits to Macau by its citizens, with visits by residents of neighbouring Guangdong province limited to once every three months in October 2008.
Open door
“Vietnam is a large, very interesting market,” Mr Antunes said in January 2009 during a presentation to the tourism industry and media on how Macau would seek to tap new markets in response to the revenue slow down.
By late May this year, however, Vong Chun Fat, the head of the Office of the Secretary for Security, announced a proposal to terminate the issuance of visas on arrival to visitors from Vietnam, along with those from Nepal,
Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh. Macau authorities may also require arriving tourists from these countries to present return or onward tickets and proof of their financial resources. “We hope this measure can come into effect in the second half of this year,” stated Mr Vong. The justification for the measure is that visitors from these source markets are statistically more likely to overstay tourism visas issued on arrival, and/or work illegally in Macau.
That may be true. It’s difficult for those outside government to prove or disprove, as the Macau authorities don’t release a precise breakdown of the nationality of visa overstayers. And the number of Vietnamese tourists visiting Macau in the previous few quarters is relatively so small that it doesn’t even warrant a separate entry in the data produced by the territory’s Statistics and Census Service (DSEC). It follows, therefore, that the potential economic impact of imposing stricter entry requirements on Vietnamese tourists will be limited.
Macau is, in any case, perfectly within its rights under the Basic Law, the territory’s mini constitution agreed between China and Portugal before the handover from Portuguese administration in 1999, to make its own immigration policy regarding entry of tourists from “foreign states.”
Article 136 of the Basic Law states:
“The Macao Special Administrative Region may, on its own, using the name
“Macao, China”, maintain and develop relations and conclude and implement agreements with foreign states and regions and relevant international organisations in the appropriate fields, including the economic, trade, financial and monetary, shipping, communications, tourism, cultural, science and technology, and sports fields.”
Twin issues
The Vietnamese visa question seems to involve two—often intertwined—topics that tend to provoke strong feelings in communities the world over: illegal immigrant workers and perceived increases in crime. Data from the Macau government do show that the number of crimes of all kinds recorded in Macau has generally risen with the increase of outside visitors and migrant workers (both legal and illegal). There are some exceptions, such as in 1997 and 1998, when 20 and 26 murders, respectively, were recorded—nearly 233% and 333% more, respectively, than the six homicides recorded in 2009, according to figures from the office of Macau’s Secretary of Security. The sharp spike in murders in the late 1990s was largely the result of a violent turf war between organised crime groups (triads) vying for supremacy prior to Macau’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1999.
The fact is, most crime in Macau is by Chinese against other Chinese—either between locals, or locals and mainlanders, Hong Kongers or Taiwanese. That’s by virtue of the statistical dominance of ethnic Chinese people in the community (95% of the resident population and 87.3% of all the 28.1 million visitors in 2009).
Nonetheless, the Vietnamese as a national and social group may have placed themselves in the sights of some Macau politicians because of a recent high profile case. In January, a Vietnamese described in media reports as an illegal worker was beaten and stabbed to death, allegedly by ten of his fellow countrymen, most of whom were reportedly illegal immigrants or holders of so-called ‘streetwalking papers’. These are documents issued as a type of unconditional bail by the Macau police that allow illegals to stay at liberty pending court hearings.
One of the alleged attackers was drowned two days later when he tried to swim along Macau’s eastern coastline into the adjacent mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai. Macau police said at the time the murder was related to competition for jobs among illegal Vietnamese workers. Seven Vietnamese men were eventually arrested on murder charges.
Macau legislator Au Kam-san, a local politician usually identified with a prodemocratic stance on political issues, said a massive backlog of cases at Macau courts was partially responsible for the abuse of streetwalking papers. Arguably, that’s a function of inefficiency within Macau’s system of public administration, rather than a function of any inherent recidivism or criminality among the Vietnamese as a social group.
Pragmatism
The Vietnamese visa issue need not be seen in human rights terms or in terms of whether the Macau locals get a warm and fuzzy feeling inside knowing that they are a welcoming community. Vietnam does, after all (like China), impose its own visa restrictions on many foreign nationals wishing to visit as tourists—in order to harvest valuable foreign currency in the form of visa fees as well as to keep tabs on who is actually inside the country. The important question for Macau is whether raising rather than lowering barriers to entry in a supposedly global tourism destination makes commercial sense in the long term and is a rational response to a real problem?
Macau may need to be careful to distinguish between immigration controls that might be politically popular with its inhabitants in the short term, and ones that risk its reputation as an open and free market and could damage its economic prospects in the medium to long term. The irony of Macau officials beckoning Vietnamese visitors with one hand when times are tough, and then 18 months later making a ‘stop right there’ gesture with the other when gross gaming revenue fuelled by Chinese visitors is growing by a possible 90% year-on-year in May, will not be lost on the Vietnamese authorities or on Vietnam’s people. It potentially makes it a lot harder for Macau to go knocking on its neighbours’ doors looking for non-gaming tourists next time there’s an economic downturn close to home or mainland China decides to impose fresh restrictions on its citizens wishing to travel to Macau.
In terms of their social impact on Macau, visa overstayers from mainland China are far more likely to put pressure on the resources of the territory than are overstayers from Vietnam. They are also far more likely to go undetected, being native speakers of at least one Chinese language and potentially having legally resident friends or relatives to support and possibly even employ them. The number of criminal cases involving the assistance and employment of illegal workers went up 19% in the first quarter of 2009, according to the office of Macau’s Secretary of Security.
A recent media report in the South China Morning Post also suggested there is a flourishing trade in sham marriages for cash between mainland Chinese and Hong Kong or Macau permanent residents. Even a cursory study of Macau’s history since the Second World War suggests that a significant portion of the current population of permanent residents are actually themselves former illegal immigrants from the mainland or children of such illegal immigrants, made legal only by one of the regular amnesties issued by the former Portuguese administrators of the territory.
Overstayers
Figures for the number of tourist visa overstayers in Macau for the first quarter of 2010 have not been released yet, but in May last year, Secretary for Security Cheong Kuok Va said the police caught 41,672 illegal immigrants and overstayers in the first quarter of 2009. A total of 91.2% of them were from mainland China. Among those mainland overstayers, 11,594 had entered Macau under the individual visitor scheme, and a further 26,428 were travelling on other permits or documents. The figures for those two categories of mainland overstayers were up by 5,570 (92.5%) and 14,036 (113.3%), respectively, year-on-year.
In addition, there were 444 illegal immigrants (an interesting number since the Cantonese word for ‘four’ sounds very similar to the Cantonese word for ‘death’—see ‘What’s in a Number’ on page 66 of this issue) from the mainland detected in that period, according to Mr Cheong. These were people who had apparently sneaked in or been smuggled over the border by land or by boat and may never have had an entry visa in the first place—or had one so long ago and overstayed for so long that records were no longer available.
In the first quarter of 2009, Macau had a population of 546,200, according to DSEC. The figure of 38,022 mainland overstayers that quarter is equivalent, therefore—had they all gone undetected—to adding 7% to Macau’s population in the space of just three months. At an annually compounded rate, plus a likely natural population increase via children born to such newcomers, it would have meant Macau’s Q1 2009 population doubling in a matter of a few years if those overstayers were not discovered and repatriated. Yet no one is calling for the tightening of visa entry requirements on mainland tourists coming to Macau.
As demonstrated on a number of occasions in recent years, the mainland authorities reserve the right to decide who among China’s citizens, and how many, should be allowed permits to visit Macau under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS). China can and does turn that IVS tap on and off to suit its own domestic political needs.
A total of 2,758,310 mainland Chinese residents visited Macau as tourists in the first quarter of 2009, according to DSEC. That means just under 1.4% of mainland visitors overstayed their legally permitted visit. It’s possible that the proportion of Vietnamese tourists who overstayed their visas is higher than that, but given that the number of Vietnamese tourists was statistically insignificant, it’s hardly likely to have much of an impact on Macau’s society or economy.
Selective
What, then, is the rationale for the on a statistically insignificant group? A possible answer is to be found not just in Macau’s subsidiary relationship to the People’s Republic of China, but also in the way Macau’s executive political leadership is structured.
Macau’s chief executive is nominated by an electoral college of citizens drawn from what, in theory, is designed to be a broadly representative cross section of interest groups within the territory. He or she then nominates a cabinet to head the major spending departments. These departmental heads are usually technocrats and business people rather than career politicians. Without getting into the general debate about representative versus democratic government, because Macau’s chief executive and cabinet aren’t elected by popular mandate, they are arguably more than usually sensitive to public opinion, and arguably less likely to resist populist calls for action on topics such as migrant workers and immigration than leaders elected by popular direct mandate—irrespective of the data or hard evidence supporting the populist demand.
This was seen recently in the debate over the use of migrant workers on Macau construction sites. In mid-May, Sands China, the local unit of Las Vegas Sands Corp (LVS), said it needed 10,500 building workers in order to recommence its US$4.2 billion Macau project known as Cotai plots five and six (but in reality, a massive resort in its own right costing almost twice as much as The Venetian Macao). Yet a few weeks before LVS’s statement, the Macau government appeared to paint itself into a corner by announcing—under popular pressure from a noisy and street-demonstrating lobby of the long term unemployed—that in future, construction projects would need to employ one local for every migrant worker brought on site. The problem is that during 2009, only 2,500 unemployed locals surveyed by Macau’s Labour Affairs Office said they were looking for jobs in construction. Macau now says it wants to train locals to fill new construction jobs. Industry analysts argue, with some justification, it’s a bit late to start thinking about that weeks before a massive multi-billion dollar project is scheduled to start. The overall—and not entirely favourable—impression is of a government making policy on the hoof, in knee-jerk response to populist pressure, rather than of a government planning strategically for the medium to long term.
Scapegoats?
Vietnamese may have found themselves in the firing line of some Macau politicians because slowly—almost without anyone noticing—they have become a major component of the migrant workforce in Macau.
In February this year (the most recently published figures), there were 6,637 Vietnamese officially working in Macau, representing around 2% of the city’s working population, according to the Labour Affairs Office. Vietnamese are now the third largest group of legal migrant workers in the territory, behind mainland Chinese in first place (40,914 of them, or 13% of Macau’s working population in February this year) and Filipinos in second place (10,817 or 3.4% of the working population).
Vietnamese workers took over the third ranking from Hong Kong workers in October 2009. That coincided with the winding down that autumn of construction work on new casinos in Macau—a sector that employs large numbers of Hong Kong workers—following the soft opening of City of Dreams in June and completion of works in the following months.
The majority of legal Vietnamese migrant workers (5,100) were employed as domestic helpers as of February this year. A further 1,075 were working in ‘recreational, cultural, gaming and other services’. That includes sex workers legally imported by Macau saunas as well as casino workers. That’s an aspect of Macau’s migrant worker policy rarely dwelt on by populist politicians when making claims that outsiders are taking local jobs.
Common practice
The imposition of visa controls on certain nationalities has many precedents in several jurisdictions around the world—often in response to an actual or perceived external risk such as unauthorised immigration or terrorism. The introduction or maintenance of visa controls even on citizens of neighbouring, friendly countries is not necessarily incompatible with the commercial aim of building Macau’s status as a global gaming and tourism resort. Singapore, for example, requires Indian passport holders to obtain a visa prior to travelling to the Lion City, even though Indian customers are a declared major target group for Las Vegas Sands Corp at its newly opened Marina Bay Sands integrated resort in Singapore. The United States—and by extension Las Vegas—also requires a majority of foreign passport holders, including those from the People’s Republic of China, to obtain entry visas prior to arrival.
Yet freedom of movement and freedom of trade is not something that should be treated in a cavalier way. It is the very foundation of Macau’s status as a Special Administrative Region within the People’s Republic of China. For such presumptions of freedom to be sacrificed—seemingly at the first sign of populist pressure and possibly without rational consideration of the facts—is arguably not a sign of strength, but of parochialism.
Macau’s gross gaming revenue appears to be on an unceasing growth track, driven by mainland China’s increasing affluence. Eventually, though, Macau is bound to encounter a road bump, possibly as consequence of Chinese central government policy—such as fresh visa restrictions or monetary tightening to cool the housing market. Then, Macau may once again look to woo visitors from other regional source markets to fill the gap. Next time, though, Macau’s advances may receive an even more muted response from its neighbours.