Sunday, February 10, 2008

The protection racket

The Philippine Government is now tightening the screws on direct hiring of Filipino overseas workers (i.e. not hired through licensed recruitment agencies). Read the details here and in the links referred.

The bureaucracy was slow in catching on - after severe repression of the formal labor market domestically, it realized its ineffectiveness in policing foreign markets. But the consistent boom in remittances introduced the government to a cash cow there for the m(b)ilking.

You'd wonder why the "beneficiaries" of protection are so enraged by these new regulations. Remember the saying? "Never attribute to malice what can be equally due to stupidity." Well in this case I think it's both.