Exploitative employers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are increasingly using tourist visas to hire Indians in a scam that leaves migrants open to labor abuse, police and activists said. Indian migrants on visit visas – quicker and cheaper to obtain than work permits – are wary of reporting exploitation on the job for fear of revealing their illegal status..The scale of the problem is unknown...But workers, police and lawyers said the practice is on the rise in a nation with more than 3 million Indian migrants, often hired at short notice to work on major construction projects. “Employers and recruiters have colluded and invented this visit visa route,” said Bheem Reddy, president of the Emigrants Welfare Forum in the southern Indian state of Telangana. Reddy’s charity estimates at least 10,000 migrants from the state...have found work in the UAE having entered the country on visit visas since July last year. A demand for short-term workers ahead of big events such as Dubai’s Expo 2020 world fair in October has further fuelled the scam, a United Nations official said on condition of anonymity.