Foreign worker

A foreign worker is a person who works in a country other than the one of which he or she is a citizen. Migrant workers may follow work within their own country or between countries, depending on which definition is used. Some foreign workers are present temporarily and legally through a guest worker program in a country with more preferred job prospects than their home country. Some are illegal aliens. Foreign workers temporarily reside in the country in which they work, and will often send most or all wages earned back to their country of origin.

In Canada, foreign nationals are accepted into Canada on a temporary basis for a number of reasons, including student visas, refugee claims, or under special permits. The largest category however is called the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), under which workers are brought to Canada by their employers for specific jobs. In 2006, there were a total of 265,000 foreign workers in Canada. Amongst those of working age, there was a 118% increase from 1996. By 2008, the intake of non-permanent immigrants (399,523, the majority of whom are TFWs), had overtaken the intake of permanent immigrants (247,243).

Green card workers are individuals who have requested and received legal permanent residence in the United States from the government and who intend to work in the United States on a permanent basis.

The great migration phase of labor migrants in the 20th century began in Germany during the 1950s, as the sovereign Germany since 1955 due to repeated pressure from NATO partners yielded to the request for closure of the so-called 'Anwerbe' Agreement (German: Anwerbeabkommen). The initial plan was a rotation principle: a temporary stay (usually two to three years), followed by a return to their homeland. The rotation principle proved inefficient for the industry, because the experienced workers were constantly replaced by inexperienced ones. The companies asked for legislation to extend the residence permits. Many of these foreign workers were followed by their families in the following period and stayed forever. Until the 1970s, more than four million migrant workers and their families came to Germany like this, mainly from the Mediterranean countries of Italy, Spain, the former Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey. Since about 1990, came for the disintegration of the Soviet bloc and the enlargement of the European Union and guest workers from Eastern Europe to Western Europe Sometimes, a host country sets up a program in order to invite guest workers, as did the Federal Republic of Germany from 1955 until 1973, when over one million guest workers (German: Gastarbeiter) arrived, mostly from Italy, Spain and Turkey.

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