Free the residence status of foreign workers from their employers and let them change jobs freely
In short
- Countries stop tying a foreign worker's residence status to one particular employer.
- Workers from abroad can change jobs on their own within the fields they are allowed to work in.
- Employers pay the agency fees, so workers do not carry debt.
- Employers may not hold passports or threaten workers with being sent home if they quit.
- Workers can keep their legal stay while they look for their next job.
If this comes true
A young woman who left a farm that never paid her starts work at a food factory in town the next week, and for the first time she sends her full pay to her family back home.
Perhaps
A fruit orchard in the mountains, where workers quit quickly, might fail to find enough help and have to give up fields that have been in the family for generations.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
This proposal ties the residence permit of a person who comes from abroad to work to the person themselves and to the fields or regions they are allowed to work in, instead of to an employment contract with one particular employer. It covers everyone who holds a time-limited work residence status, including work in farming, care, construction, manufacturing and housework. Within the permitted range, the worker can move to another workplace without the employer's consent. A set grace period is allowed for finding the next job, and the worker does not lose their right to stay during that time. Employers are forbidden to hold passports or residence documents, or to make a return home or a penalty payment the price of quitting, and an employer who breaks these rules loses the right to take in foreign workers for a set period. Employers pay the fees to the agencies that recruit workers and the travel costs, and they may not charge them to the worker. If fees were taken from the worker in their home country, the employer who took them in must pay them back. The receiving country still decides the total number of workers and the range of fields, as it does now, but it stops assigning workers to individual employers. Consultations and complaints about pay and working hours are received at an office separate from the authority that manages residence, and treating a person's residence unfavorably because they filed a complaint is forbidden.
BenefitsThe freedom to quit raises conditions at work
When workers can move to another job at any time, employers have to pay wages properly, keep to working hours and provide decent housing in order to keep people. People leave bad workplaces and gather at good ones, so the way a market is supposed to work reaches workers from abroad too. Because they can report unpaid wages or violence without losing their right to stay, illegal treatment that was hidden is more likely to come out. Having employers pay the agency fees ends the situation where workers are bound by debt before they even arrive, and it removes any reason to pay high fees to abusive agencies. Also, when workers from abroad are no longer cheap and silent, the pressure that pushes down the wages of local people in the same workplaces gets weaker. Treating people from abroad not as people who will run away unless held, but as people who choose where to work by their own will, also builds trust within the receiving society and helps those who stay long to settle into their communities.
DrawbacksHard-to-staff jobs and regions lose their workers
The biggest cost falls on jobs and regions with harsh conditions that few people want. In part, farm fields in rural areas, factories in the mountains and overnight care work were able to find workers because workers from abroad could not move. Once they are free to move, people will drift to cities with higher pay or to easier jobs, and rural farms and small businesses will lose workers without the means to improve their conditions. As a result, shops may close and the price of food and care may rise, which comes back to hit the lives of people in those areas. Also, even if employers pay the agency fees and travel costs, they cannot recover the cost of hiring if a worker quits right away, so some employers will stop bringing in people from abroad at all. Then the chances for people who want to come to work will actually shrink. For the receiving country's government too, it becomes harder to see who is working where, and the effort of tracking people who work outside the permitted range grows.
Learn the background
Many countries fill jobs that lack workers with people from abroad, but the residence permit often assumes that the person will work for one particular employer. In this setup, the employer holds the worker's very right to live in the country. Even when wages go unpaid, hours are far too long or violence occurs, the worker cannot speak up, because quitting means losing the right to stay. This is even more true for people who paid high agency fees before coming and are in debt. The system has lasted because the employer gets a steady worker who does not quit easily, the government of the receiving country can easily keep track of who works where, and the sending country needs the money sent home to keep coming. All three sides gain, and the only one who bears the loss is the worker, who has no place to speak. No matter how much support is added, such as skill certification or language education, exploitation will not end as long as the structure remains in which workers cannot stand up to their employer.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
It helps pay for the server and the AI's planting
This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-23b) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes