Vietnamese workers have been a particular point of contention, even though there is a longstanding Vietnamese community here, born amid the fraternal work programmes in the 1970s.

“The Czechs don’t like us because we look different,” said Van, who lamented that he had already been accosted in Chocen, the small industrial town in eastern Bohemia where he worked, by locals shouting, “Vietnamese, go home!” Vietnamese labourers, he said, were also denied access to local discos and restaurants.

The government has responded by trying to find ways to ship out Asian immigrants. Under a voluntary return policy started in February, any unemployed foreign worker who wants to go home is eligible for free one-way air or rail fare and about $700 in cash. In the first two months, about 2,000 Mongolians, Ukrainians and Kazakhs took up the offer.

But like Van, many of the Vietnamese workers here, saddled with debt, would prefer to stay and wait for better times. “It would not be good for me to go back to Vietnam,” he said on a recent day, wondering where he would spend the night. “I would return home with empty hands and couldn’t marry or build a house. That would be a great shame for me.”

Julie Lien Vrbkova, who has worked as a Vietnamese interpreter at several automobile factories in the Czech Republic, said she had been shocked by “slave-like” working conditions, including 12-hour days during which Vietnamese workers were beaten if they stopped working.

At one factory, she recalled, a Vietnamese man had worked a week with a broken rib because he was afraid to ask for time off.

... contd.