Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) but, again, help was not forthcoming and they were just told to keep following up their claims. The lending company she borrowed money from has continued to seek repayment and warned her that her debt would keep growing every day. She was only able to make two payments in the first two months ofworking in Taiwan and now, jobless and without savings, she doesn't know how to repay the P76,000 including interest that she still owes. Migrante has also noted the tightening of immigration laws in the US, Canada and Europe which has already given way to permanent status being denied at the last minute * and only temporary status given - as well as crackdowns on undocumented workers. In Australia and New Zealand, permanent visa holders who were retrenched were reclassified as temporary visa holders. Greater intensity of long-standing problems The crisis increases established economic pressures on employers, on migrants and potential migrants, and on governments of sending and receiving countries. The onset of the crisis will intensify long-standing workplace problems faced migrants worldwide and in the region. Many ofthe long-standing abuses and by violations of migrant workers' rights have economic roots to begin with and the recent descent into global crisis will heighten these economic pressures most likely resulting in greater numbers of and more intense rights violations. But since the crisis does not create distinctly new and additional problems - outside perhaps of visible retrenchments and poorer job prospects in cases of outright factory closures - it is diffrcult to attribute what are due to the crisis per se and what are from long-standing problems. The problem is compounded by how poor are current schemes for detailed monitoring of the state of migrant rights and welfare. The onset of global crisis adds two strong economic pressures particularly affecting migrants. First, economic distress means closures, retrenchments and hiring cutbacks abroad by private and public employers. Migrants could also be among the first to be laid ofl even through illegal dismissal, especially in countries which are more sensitive to a backlash by nationals against foreigners. Second, economic contraction also squeezes profit margins and creates economic pressures on businesses and other employers to cut costs. Employers have already resorted to forcing shorter work times, imposing forced leaves and other income-depressing flexible labor arrangements. Migrants could also suffer wages driven below contractual agreements, the reduction or removal of benefits, and perhaps even contract substitution. Efforts to increase productivity could also mean greater workplace stresses. 24