e-Con e-News

Posted byee ink.June 27, 2026Posted inUncategorizedTags:China, history, India, migration, news, politics

blog: https://eesrilanka.wordpress.com

‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 21-27 June 2026

The European Union (EU) has been operating a giant human trafficking network, buying & selling workers around the world, including from Sri Lanka. Not only is the EU involved, but the governments of Anglo North America (the USA & Canada) thrive & revel in these practices as well. For instance, during the 30-year war on Sri Lanka, these governments used their diplomatic – as well as NGO – channels to cherry-pick skilled workers & ‘professionals’ from refugee camps. Local politicians, north & south, also indulged in such lucrative ‘refugee’ games. Many of their major ‘recruiters’ in the camps ended up as ‘ethnic leaders’, involved in ‘settlement & adaptation’, becoming lawyers & even MPs representing ‘Diaspora’ communities, promoting war to generate even more refugees. Most workers suffered more mundane fates.

     This ee glances at the EU’s migration trade. It’s hard not to recall that the largest commerce before England’s opium ‘triangle’ trade from India to China, was the widespread European trading of the enslaved, ‘graduating’ from chattel to indentured to wage labor. The silencing echoes in thunder. The international trade in human labor, midst the domestic human resource biz, is even more pernicious & lucrative than the drug trade & weapons business, even as they are all intimately linked. There is very little analysis of this trade, even in so-called ‘liberal’ publications, perhaps due to their constituencies (social workers, teachers, lawyers, etc.) benefiting from this traffic. Limited exposure of this desperate world is then left to sensationalist tabloids & fascists.

     This ee Focus adapts an interview about the lives of Sri Lankans in Romania. Many Sri Lankans are, legally & illegally squirreled to Romania, many with the promise of eventual settlement in Western Europe. Insight News’ Shihar Aneez notes:

‘Romania has become one of the fastest-growing destinations

for Sri Lankan migrant workers seeking opportunities in Europe.

But behind the promise of better jobs & higher wages,

some workers report a very different reality.’

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Aneez interviews Romanian researcher Iulia Hau who points to what she claims is a ‘cultural blind spot’ which assumes Europeans do no harm. Media instead blame Sri Lankan ‘agents’ for the horrors migrant workers end up enduring in Europe and elsewhere. She describes how ‘Romania has become a gateway to Europe, how migration networks operate.’ Aneez’s extensive interview covers ‘recruitment practices, migration costs, labor exploitation, human trafficking investigations, unpaid wages, workplace safety concerns, legal challenges, and the difficulties many workers face when seeking justice… and what prospective workers should know before making the journey.’

     What is excluded however is the ‘larger picture’. This week, we heard that Israel is blocking remittances by over 5,000 Sri Lankan workers amounting to almost $7million. The Israeli government has frozen the funds of the money transfer business, Global Remit Currency Services, which is accused of money laundering. But there is very little news about what they did & the larger banking interests behind them. There was also ‘headline’ news that the Sri Lanka government has launched an ‘app to draw Lankan migrant workers’ complaints.’ When companies & government departments don’t even answer landlines let alone mobile phones, these proclamations about such ‘digitalization’ & other modern conveniences, AI, etc, are another sick joke. Even crazier is the threat by the National Chamber of Exporters (NCE)’s call ‘for a framework to recruit foreign workers’ (see ee Workers).

     Hau’s tale is important because the laws are inscribed in a Kafkaesque manner to create innumerable intermediaries – middlemen (& middlewomen!) both here and abroad. The European traders and bureaucrats who leverage this system are kept invisible. The process of Sri Lankan workers being recruited and trafficked appears haphazard and cruel, replete with tales of sexual abuse and fraud, despite the formal Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), and the 900 member agencies of the Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agencies. Such tales are not only reserved for going to work in other countries, as in West Asia, but stories abound of the humiliation, sexual harassment & bribery practised by European & US & Canadian visa officials. So, whereas the migration process appears informal here, there is an overall method to the madness. While Sri Lankans are being hired to work in Romania, the rest of Europe is formally recruiting workers, through Romania (though, as with Sri Lanka, they’re taking advantage of both countries’ education & skills imparted by their now-derided socialist policies). And not just skilled workers.

     ee (18 April 2020) noted how England was importing Romanian workers to pluck fruit, through their Country Land & Business Association (CLBA), which represents rural landowners in England & Wales. The CLBA funds 100s of MPs in their ‘democratic’ parliament. Romanian workers were flown in by an unnamed food produce company, which chartered a plane booked by Air Charter Service (ACS). We even then wondered why the BBC story did not name the food company involved: ABF, Booker, Sainsbury, Tesco? Or mention the banks involved?  ee (25 April 2020) reported how Germany was planning to fly in 10,000s of eastern Europeans for harvesting – keeping the system of seasonal work alive despite Covid 19. Incoming Romanians were welcomed with ‘chocolate Easter bunnies’ by the German agricultural minister. In Austria, carers and agricultural workers were flown in from Bulgaria, Croatia & Romania. Yet 2 years before that the Austrian government had reduced family allowance of Eastern European workers. By 2020 even bonus payments were given to care-workers to make them stay longer!

     The blocking of Sri Lankans’ remittances is not as unorganized as it was made out to be in 2022. What is lacking in the scholarship of our well-funded social scientists is the linking of this trade to the labor policies of the humongous multinational corporations (MNCs), confederations of industries and federations of ‘small business’, chambers of commerce, employers’ federations etc, and major recruitment organizations that specialize in sourcing and relocating workers. It is no surprise that while there are ‘world governing bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) to oversee trade, there is no such body to monitor migration. In the USA & Canada, priority is given to temporary migrants, siphoned to farm work & ‘care’. Such workers are prevented from joining unions, and lack their own health and social benefits. All the blather about ‘building walls’ & ’deportation’ only take place after harvests in the autumn, and seasonal wages come due to be paid. All blather of human rights excludes the right to decent work, and to develop our countries.

     In Sri Lanka, workers’ remittances are the largest source of foreign exchange, even if such value is not appreciated at points of entry & exit. Migrant labor is also used for ‘integrating’ our economies with other countries, creating further dependencies, like market access for import-heavy exports.

     The Philippines is supposed to be the largest labour exporting country in Asia. Yet, despite the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) shilling about such labor movements enabling technology transfer & upskilling, it has not developed their country, only creating greater dependency. During the Covid pandemic more Filipina nurses died inside the USA than inside the Philippines.

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• This week also saw the entry into Sri Lanka, of more US war-makers & related officials, bearing explosive gifts, demanding Sri Lanka become a base for them to harass our neighbors, monitoring ‘sanctioned vessels’, etc (see ee Quotes, Kapur, Schneider). It is no coincidence that they were followed by the IMF, World Bank, etc, offering yet-to-be-seen billions in aid etc, which might follow if only we fulfil their demands. The World Bank tell us (or warns) that 1 million young Sri Lankans are about to enter the labour force, and their ‘repayable’ dollars are to assist the private sector to employ workers.

     This week also saw another revelation of millions & billions defrauded from the country, involving mis-invoicing, under- & over -invoicing, etc. It is no surprise that the merchant media fails to even hint that the larger defalcations are legally committed by multinational corporations. Some media do point out that it was the JVP-supported Foreign Exchange Act of 2017 that removed the Exchange Control Act of 1953, that ‘under the pretext of liberalising the foreign currency flow, converted non-bailable criminal offences into civil offences’ (see Random Notes).

     Meanwhile, the Business news is full of the philanthropy – private corporations donating this medical item & building this or that part of a school, etc – without mentioning who is going to sustain such largesse. These do-good acts often act as preludes to the privatization of health & education.

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‘It is wrong to blame governments alone for poor economic growth, as many do.

Most economic activity in this country is run by the private sector

& leaders there have made poor use of opportunities.’ – Usvatte-Aratchi

• One economist lamented this week, that despite Sri Lanka apparently following all the rules demanded by the IMF etc, nothing seems to protect us. They also note that the USA & EU’s perpetual resort to war is not a part of these analysts’ ‘planning scenarios’ & growth projections. Our policymakers seem to close their eyes & ears & noses to such first & last resorts. Some speak of our primary need for ensuring energy security, but do not recall the story of DJ Wimalasurendra, let alone the long trail of sabotage of progressive industrial policies:

‘For quite some time, there has been no agency of government

dealing with long-term economic & social policy questions.

Nor have universities been of any help.’ – Usvatte-Aratchi

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This ee Focus reproduces Usvatte-Aratchi’s survey of the, perhaps-feeble, attempts to plan the economy, as well as the eminent personages who have sought since 1948 to steer Sri Lanka’s economy. He even mentions SBD de Silva! He deems ‘mysterious’, why the present government has seen no need for specialist advisors. He even lists famed Indian economists. Though he too ‘mysteriously’ misses out on naming the Indian statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis whose first two 5-year plans inspired many countries after WW2. Despite relentless attacks, led by US-paid economic hitmen, Mahalanobis’ plans laid the foundation for India’s heavy industry and set up the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

     Usvatte-Aratchi also feels a Central Bank can only resolve short-term problems. He praises Sri Lanka’s outstanding successes in mortality, in health & education (carried out by political leaders). He then points to the petty nature of our merchants, and asks: ‘Where are the large-scale manufacturing & service companies, selling the world over, where economies of scale abound in the 21st century?’ And he wonders why:

‘No multinational companies have

established here any large factories or offices.

Is the air we breathe deathly to enterprise?’

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• The nature of the US-led white & honorary-white coalition may be gauged by this week’s announcement by the US government of the resignation of England’s Prime Minister, even before the English leader (their 6^th PM to quit in 10 years) himself declared his exit. Brexit indeed!

‘Politics is a concentrated expression of economics…

The military function is the essential

expression of this political concentration…

– Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage

Their news is full of headlines about ceasefires & prayers, for peace to be prolonged. Many podcasts are exaggerating tactical battlefield victories, rather than soberly assessing the imperialist penchant for strategic permanent war. The media is full of awe for the white settler states, alternating between awe and revulsion. Yet anyone who knows US & white settler history, knows full well their genocidal practices, and what has actually defeated them. Having now been ‘tactically’ thwarted in parts of West Asia, does not mean the US & EU have suddenly been seized by an attack of peaceability. We fear the US-led European (& Japanese) war machine will next turn their guns on Cuba, as well as China. The current nature of the ‘hyperimperialism’ endangering the world is fully detailed in this ee Focus’ 6^th excerpt of the (TI) Tricontinental Institute’s pathbreaking investigation:

‘During its history England’s forces (or forces

with an English mandate) have invaded, had

some control over, or fought conflicts in 171

of the world’s 193 countries that are currently

UN member states, or 9 out of 10 of all countries.’

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TI describes the organization of the Global North (GN) arrayed against the world, their umbilical links to the USA & its intelligence services, and tabulates the numbers & types of wars they have waged. Most important is its analysis of the special relationship between the USA & Israel. The USA itself ‘was established by white, religious extremists who, in 1690, conceived and established their colonial settlements as ‘plantations of religion’. It is also clear that: ‘Israel was the creation of English & US imperialism’. (see ee Focus)

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The production of and trade in plantation crops

were determined by trading monopolies

consisting of agency houses, brokers, shippers &

the marketing combines in the metropolitan countries.

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• How these monopoly interests extended their power over plantation economies have been a vital component of SBD de Silva’s classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment. This ee Focus continues Chapter 11 where he shows the influence of these monopolies on the technological & marketing strategies of plantations. He shows they preferred to ‘maximize gross revenue instead of minimizing production costs’. He focuses on why this method of producing tea in plantations saw no need to modernize technology or advance workers’ skills. This has had a deadly stranglehold on the upgrading of ‘human resources’ in Sri Lanka.

     The resort to any innovative technology was usually due to great external pressures such as wartime shortages and competition, for example, the resort to synthetic over natural rubber, beet sugar over cane. SBD gives numerous examples from around the world, why colonial policy favored higher prices over more efficient production. Another dampener to innovation was the relationship between the managing agency firms and the plantations, and its impact on technology. Since payments to the agency were usually paid on a profits basis, plantations kept wage rates as low as possible, therefore preferring labour intensity, so technological changes were of no interest to the agency.

     It is worth recalling once again SBD de Silva’s insight into the differences between industrial producer capital, and merchant capital, which depends on privileged access to the state and physical violence. It is time to expose the corruption of the constant cry about corruption by a media that is the epitome of merchant corruption. We are a country ruled by importers of other countries’ industrial goods, and ruled by importers disguised as exporters. We have to endure the sermons of economists who import their ideas from our imperialist masters, always crying about the need for more exports which are actually made of even more imports. Such is the comedy that turns us into exporters of our greatest resource: the fruit of our land and labor.

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Contents:

The European Union’s Deadly Migration Game