Govt must get tough on illegals

V.K. Chin, The Star, Asia News Network, Selangor, Malaysia

There are two ways the government can consider to minimize the number of Indonesians entering Malaysia illegally.

One is for more Malaysian companies to invest in projects in Indonesia.

The other is to turn Malaysia, or at least the peninsula, into a fortress so that it will be more difficult for the Indonesians to sneak into the country by sea.

Malaysia may have a long coastline with its biggest neighbor but it is still possible to prevent such arrivals, usually in small boats and at night when detection is more difficult.

The plus side for the enforcement agencies is that many of the landing points by such boats are known and so it would not be that difficult to at least apprehend those arriving in this manner.

Still, detaining them on arrival is just one aspect of the operation as the other is how fast they can be sent back to Indonesia.

Any delay in deportation will cost the government more money and resources to look after such illegals during their confinement.

The ideal situation is to stop them before they begin their journey.

But this will mean action from the Indonesian side, something out of Malaysia's control.

Malaysia may be keen to do so but the Indonesians may have other ideas and are unlikely to spend money and resources to prevent their people from leaving.

Therefore this is also unlikely to work and the Indonesians will certainly not be prepared to help.

Some of them may not even mind the exodus, as it will give their people a chance to find jobs in Malaysia.

We have to depend too much on Jakarta's goodwill to reduce the outflow and this is therefore a difficult option to implement due to lack of cooperation.

There is also the problem of those who enter the country legally but will overstay to look for jobs.

There appears to be many more such cases and the immigration officials manning the airports and ports will have to be vigilant to ensure that the Indonesians arrive with sufficient funds to come in as tourists.

What the government can do is to increase the amount of money they bring in with them.

Those who do not have a return ticket or have insufficient funds should be detained.

It will be the responsibility of the airline bringing such passengers in to send them back on the next available flight.

This will not be a problem if the passengers have a return ticket, and the airline would not suffer any financial loss.

One effective way of checking the situation is for more drastic punishment.

The only deterrent is to impose whipping on the offenders before deporting them at the earliest opportunity.

It will be pointless to jail them even for a few weeks for overstaying or not having proper travel documents.

When they are in jail, the government will still have to provide them with food and other amenities.

Therefore it is better to just whip them and send them home as quickly as possible.

While this is a drastic option and would most probably incite protest from the governments whose nationals are punished in this manner, we can only hope that they will understand that this is the law to deal with such offenders.

We must keep on emphasizing that the government wants other nationals to come in to work with proper documents and that those who break the law must be prepared to face the music.