Transcript: Migrant Workers

WORKER (translated): I came in March to Beijing.

INTERVIEWER: Oh yeah do you like it?

WORKER (translated): I like Beijing.

INTERVIEWER: What is this here that you're building?

JIANG: He's building a kindergarten.

INTERVIEWER: Kindergarten. Uh-huh. And how much does he get paid?

(SUPER: Jiang Xueqin, Reporter)

WORKER (translated): ("500 to 600 yuan")

I make sixty, seventy dollars a month.

INTERVIEWER: Where do you come from?

WORKER (translated): I'm from Hubei province.

WORKER (translated): Hubei province.

INTERVIEWER: Everybody?

TRANSLATOR: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Seems like there is nobody left in Hubei.

NARRATOR: The Chinese government does not want reporters observing conditions at migrant work sites but there are more than three million illegal laborers in Beijing alone and a small army of migrants can be found at any construction site in the city.

INTERVIEWER: Who's our friend here? What's his name?

GUO XIAO HUI, MIGRANT WORKER (translated): My name is Guo Xiao Hui. I've been in Beijing for six, seven years. I make two dollars a day working over ten hours a day.

GUO XIAO HUI (translated): She's my wife. They came together from a home village. There's no industry in my hometown.

INTERVIEWER: And where do you sleep?

GUO XIAO HUI (translated): Ah I sleep here -- in this room. I sleep right here. This is where we cook our food -- with the rice cooker. This is all my summer clothes.

GUO'S WIFE (translated): I want to be back in my village with my kid.

INTERVIEWER: When was the last time you saw your child?

GUO'S WIFE (translated): In February.

INTERVIEWER: You really think you have a chance to get back to your village or you're gonna be stuck here?

GUO XIAO HUI (translated): Very slim chance.

GUO'S WIFE (translated): It makes me sad to think how poor we are and how we can't make any money.

NARRATOR: There are no state social services for these migrants and they can be deported back to their village at any time. If they need housing, healthcare or schools for their children they have to create the system themselves.

KRISTIN: We're here on the outskirts of Beijing. My name is Kristin Looney. I'm an American woman working here at middle -- at the middle school branch of the school as an English teacher.

KRISTIN: This is a school specifically for migrants with low income. There are a lot of migrants in Beijing. In, in just this city alone there's about three million at least.

You can't become a legal Beijing resident very easily um, because of some pretty severe legal restrictions on that.