The unintended consequences of child labor laws

The German weekly Der Spiegel has a report about the unintended consequences of child labor laws in one Pakistani city known for producing soccer balls. Apparently children were frequently employed in the factories, until child labor "advocates" in the West forced companies like Nike and Adidas to ensure that their suppliers weren't employing children. But what happened to the kids? Surely after they were freed from their toiling in the factories they went to school and now have well-paying office jobs, right?

Parents now send their children to the brickworks and into metalworking companies where no one is worried about corporate image. The families need the money to survive. The local sports companies are aware of what's happened but they want to fulfil the wishes of their Western customers. After all, the people who spend a lot of money on footballs want to do so with a clear conscience. The customer in a sports retail outlet doesn't realize that young girls are now hauling bricks right next door to Danayal, the stitching factory.

"Ten or 12-year-olds were well off here," says one manager who asked not to be named. "They learned a trade here that secured them an income for life. Now we're having trouble finding new stitchers."

Something tells me that making bricks is considerably more difficult and hazardous than sewing soccer balls, and probably pays less. Let's just hope they don't shut down the brick factory, too, or prostitution might be their next job.

Remittances up in these hard times

Two remittances-related blog posts popped up on my feed reader today. The first, from International Political Economy Zone, is about how, despite economists' expectations, remittances in the Philippines are still increasing. This post, from the World Bank's Private Sector Development blog, discusses how the World Bank and the Economist believe that immigrants are engaging in currency speculation on the margin – the strengthening of first-world currencies compared to developing countries' currencies is causing immigrants to send more money home, since they know their families will get more local currency for their dollars/euros/pounds.

The overall remittance picture according to a World Bank report (.pdf) is that remittances to Latin America (presumably mostly from the US and Spain) are mostly down, whereas they are still growing in countries in South and Southeast Asia, albeit at slower rates. That is, with the exception of Pakistan, whose growth rate in remittances is actually up so far for 2009. The Philippines' growth rate in remittances slowed from 14% from 2007-08 to 3% so far in 2009 – obviously lower because of the economic slowdown in the US, with its 4 million Filipino immigrants, but perhaps mitigated due to the fact that demand for healthcare, where many Filipinos in America work, has been more robust than the demand for construction, where many Mexicans work[ed]. The growth in the rate of growth of remittances to Pakistan baffles me though – I'd suspect that most overseas Pakistanis worked in the Gulf and the UK, which haven't exactly been thriving as of late. Perhaps the growth is driven by Pakistanis in India? Is there even significant immigration from Pakistan to India?

Benazir Bhutto: WMD pixie

According to author Shyam Bhatia, Benazir Bhutto herself personally delivered nuclear secrets to North Korea in 1993. While it was known/suspected that Pyongyang received its nuclear weapons technology through A. Q. Khan's network, this would be the first time such a high-level political figure is implicated in the trade.

In his book, Bhatia writes that Bhutto brought up the North Korea visit during a discussion in 2003 about her difficulties with Pakistan's military. "Let me tell you something," she declared, before telling Bhatia to turn off his tape recorder. "I have done more for my country than all the military chiefs of Pakistan combined."

At the time, Pakistan was in desperate need of new missile technology that would counter improvements in India's missiles. Bhutto said she was asked to carry "critical nuclear data" to hand over in Pyongyang as part of a barter deal.

"Before leaving Islamabad she shopped for an overcoat with the 'deepest possible pockets' into which she transferred CDs containing the scientific data about uranium enrichment that the North Koreans wanted," Bhatia writes. "She implied with a glint in her eye that she had acted as a two-way courier, bringing North Korea's missile information on CDs back with her on the return journey."

My main question is, why would Bhutto herself be doing this? Pakistan has a very capable and very active secret service, and Bhutto was an elected politician.

Immigration in Arizona and Slough

From the Guardian and the LA Times are two very different stories about immigration: in the Times, Arizona is seeing success in keeping out illegal immigrants and the native-born population hasn't seemed to be suffering much from it; in the Guardian, the town of Slough has been booming amidst high levels of immigration. The places are in some ways similar – Arizona is along the border and sees many migrants from Mexico, and Slough is the most diverse borough in the UK outside of London.

But the similarities end there – in Arizona, the immigration that's causing concern is illegal and the immigrants are relatively low-skilled. In Slough, however, the immigrants have largely been legal ("Asians" [British for Pakistanis and Indians] and Poles after World War II, and more recently immigrants from Africa and newly-EUified Poland), and the government must provide all healthcare service for the immigrants. So while in America people go on and on about emergency rooms being filled up, in Britain, an influx of human beings clogs the entire medical system. And yet, the furor over illegal immigration is more often played out in stories about crime, whereas in the US it's about immigrants stealing jobs and clogging up schools and hospitals. According to the articles, both the economies of Slough and of Arizona are booming at the moment, but the initiatives in Arizona limiting immigration have just recently been put into effect, and the future will tell what impact they had on Arizona. Of course, if the economy goes south, it could just be part of a broader trend.