Shanghai targets illegal expatriates
Shanghai labour authorities have launched a campaign against illegal overseas workers as a rising tide of job seekers from abroad flows into the city.
The Shanghai Labour and Social Security Bureau said city authorities had issued 92,000 work permits for overseas nationals from 152 countries by the end of last month. The report did not specify the period over which the permits had been issued, but it said 51,000 foreign citizens were legally working in the city.
More than 85 per cent of them came from Japan, the United States, South Korea, Singapore and Germany. In addition, 42,500 people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau were registered as working in Shanghai. The city issued 18,325 permits last year, more than four times the total for 2000, the News Times reported.
Officials warned that overseas nationals without job permits would be fined or deported and their employers fined up to 50,000 yuan.
Peter Zhang, from Mercer Human Resources Consulting in Shanghai, said the government's crackdown was mainly due to concerns about growing tax evasion and social stability.
'Now Shanghai has got more foreign enterprises and they have introduced more foreign workers because the limited pool of local talent could not meet the strong demand from foreign companies. At the same time, the salaries of many local highly skilled professionals have increased dramatically in recent years,' he said.
Multinational companies rarely employed illegal foreign workers, but undocumented employees were sometimes taken on by small businesses that did not have a strong legal awareness about hiring foreign staff or were prepared to help expatriates dodge tax.
