Go tough with overstayers

Go tough with overstayers

Sin Chew Daily
Asia News Network
Selangor, Malaysia

Foreign laborers have taken Malaysia in a big way and some
unhealthy phenomena and social issues have been seen as
inevitable fallout.

We should remember that Indonesian workers created some
commotions in the country not that long ago, seriously
threatening the security of this country. Foreign maids,
meanwhile, have also become the root of family problems while
some of them have also fallen victim to cases of maltreatment and
violence.

And because the situation has become so serious nowadays that
the government should not ignore their mere existence anymore. As
a result, expulsion orders have been passed down and foreign
laborers working in a broad spectrum of industries have been sent
packing.

Mass inflow of foreign workers is itself an unhealthy social
phenomenon and is likely to generate a host of social issues such
as strikes, riots, maltreatment of employers' kids by maids, and
of maids by their employers, not to mention the robberies
perpetrated by Indonesian workers here.

Nevertheless, when women complained to the government that
overstaying Chinese ladies have seduced their husbands and
destroyed their families, deputy home minister Chor Chee Heung
replied that these women should stop complaining but instead
"watch their own husbands properly".

According to Chor, these women have not been able to manage
their families properly that they try to put the blame on the
authorities. To the deputy minister the extramarital affairs
involving Chinese ladies have nothing much to do with the
government, and as long as the wives are willing to "take care of
their husbands properly", their husbands would most definitely
behave themselves.

Chor's rhetoric is by no means novel, but it can only come
from the mouth of a man, not a deputy minister. Only old-
fashioned men would still think that a wife should be blamed for
her husband's indecent behavior. As a man, Chor should know that
men are easily seduced by women, but his irresponsible remarks --
not unlike what superstar Jackie Chan has said, "I've done
something that all men would do," -- do not go well with his
stature as a deputy minister.

It is nevertheless understandable that perhaps after Chor met
the visiting delegates from the Department of Laborer Protection
of China, he made the above remarks just to please his guests in
the name of "promoting Sino-Malaysian cooperation".

A supposedly complicated issue involving family values has
suddenly been simplified by our deputy minister into a lesson
directed at Malaysian women.

If we are unable to stop importing foreign laborers to meet
the country's development needs, at least we should learn how to
control them.

In this respect, the government has the obligation to round up
overstaying foreign workers.

How to effectively control overstayers remains a problem that
the authorities must come face to face with. Pointing finger at
women for not taking good care of their husbands while failing to
understand the real picture, is utterly unfair to the "victims".