Right now as you sit comfortably reading this article an army of invisible workers is toiling day and night to provide you with fresh inexpensive supermarket produce, clean homes, cheap restaurant meals and pirated DVDs, they provide supermarkets with booming profits and contribute billions to the British economy. Though invisible, you know these people; they are the harassed waiters in London's Chinatown, DVD sellers in supermarket car-parks and the bodies being unloaded from the back of trucks in Dover or washed up on the beaches of Morecambe bay...

This army of workers numbers somewhere between 310,000 and 570,000 people (UK Home Office 2007). They come from all over the world, different races and different languages united only in their poverty, overwork and underpay. These members of the British 'Sub-Economy' are not protected by any employment law or support group; they have no access to legal services, education, housing or healthcare and are made ripe for exploitation due to their 'illegal migrant' status. The work they perform is refused by established British workers. It's done in atrocious, hazardous conditions with illegally long hours and rewarded with pitiful wages.

Hsiao-Hung Pai's Book 'Chinese Whispers' examines one sector of this labour army; probably the most vulnerable and most exploited group, the Chinese migrant worker. To get a firsthand account of the plight of these people, Hsia-Hung Pai went undercover posing as a newly arrived migrant shortly after the Morecambe Bay Tragedy in 2004 (elements of the book form the basis of Nick Broomfield's film 'Ghosts'); 'Chinese Whispers' documents her experiences in the British black economy. Hsiao-hung begins by describing the reality of the effects of globalisation and the boom of the new Chinese economy.

Universally portrayed as the poster boy of capitalistic success, China also has an underclass of unemployed workers left out of the economic miracle, workers who were laid-off from bankrupt state industries that previously supplied much of the country with stable and guaranteed employment. These people now find themselves with obsolete skills in a massive sea of cheap labour, living in grinding poverty, desperate to survive but with little prospect of change. Out of desperation families will borrow huge amounts of money to pay people-smugglers to send their sons and daughters to the west in search of employment.

With a reputation for wealth, 'fair-play' and friendliness, the UK is a choice destination. But arriving in England they find themselves at the bottom of the heap of an already established exploitative hierarchical system of snakehead smugglers, gang masters and employers who turn a blind eye. Isolated, disoriented and unable to speak the language they soon find themselves working in indentured labour conditions, paying off their families debts on laughably small wages.

Hsiao-Hung Pai's book reports in stark detail the reality of the daily lives of Chinese 'illegals' and in doing so follows a tradition of undercover reporting as a way of highlighting social issues from Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris' to Mayhew's 'London Labour and the London Poor'. The book offers no concrete solutions but aims to bring, whatever you opinion is on immigration is, a shameful situation to light.

Facts on Immigration:

• There are between 310,000 and 570,000 illegal immigrants in the UK, according to Home Office estimates
• If allowed to live legally, they would pay more than £1bn in tax each year
• Deporting them would cost £4.7bn and leave acute shortages of cleaners, care workers and hotel staff if allowed to stay, the net benefit of nearly £6bn would pay for 300 new schools, 12 district hospitals or 200,000 new nurses
• Nearly 50% of foreign-born immigrants leave Britain within five years
• Migrants fill 90% of low-paid jobs in London and account for 29% of the capital's workforce. London is the UK's fastest-growing region
• Legal migrants comprise 8.7% of the population, but contribute 10.2% of all taxes. Each immigrant pays an average of £7,203 in tax, compared with £6,861 for non-migrant workers
• There were 25,715 people claiming asylum last year. If allowed to work, they would generate £123m for the Treasury (Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent, The Independent Friday, 31 March 2006)

Talking Points

Chinese Community

What is surprising to me is the eagerness of Chinese co-patriots to join in this exploitation (new immigrants are controlled and sold by earlier migrants in a kind of 'kapo' organisation) and the established Chinese communities' tacit collusion in the system. By publishing this book Hsiao-Hung Pai has faced threats of violence and legal action from members of the Chinese community for revealing their complicity in this exploitation. Why is the Chinese community willing to ignore or even engage in this exploitation rather than offer support?

Is illegal immigration a fact of life; 'we had hard times when we came over so why should we help...' 'Hardship is a way of sorting out the lazy from the strong, the ones who work hard will get rich eventually...' and just part of the economic life of the country?

Solutions

The United Nations:

The 'International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families' sets out to create an internationally accepted statute of rights for ALL migrant workers. In the same was as human rights are internationally protected, is this the way to protect the rights of all migrant workers? So far no migrant receiving countries have signed the treaty ' only migrant sending countries

Immigration Amnesty

One study claims that an amnesty would benefit the UK to the tune of £6 Billion. How should this work? An amnesty after four years work?

What do you think? Post your comments here.