Punishing the profiteers

For every undocumented immigrant worker who arrives on our shores, there is a chain of intermediaries from brokers and agents to traffickers and smugglers who brought him over.

And there is also, if the illegal immigrant is lucky, an employer waiting. In an attempt to deter foreigners from seeking work in this country through illicit channels, the Government has imposed stiff penalties not only for the undocumented workers but also for the recruiters and employers. Although they have broken our immigration laws, the foreign workers are in a sense victims rather than criminals. They are usually exploited by unscrupulous hirers and bosses who lure them with promises of jobs with good pay and take advantage of their vulnerable status as illegals.

That is why Home Minister Datuk Azmi Khalid is right to be concerned with the light sentences that have been meted out to tekong who have been charged with transporting illegal immigrants. It is vital that the courts provide deterrent sentences for tekong and other players in the clandestine network who smuggle in foreign workers through surreptitious sea and land routes. Severe sentences should also be dished out to employers who hire them. Otherwise, the regular operations and raids to enforce the law will only serve to penalize foreign workers and increase their numbers in the detention camps rather than those who profit the most from people trafficking.

Since the hiring chain does not originate or end in Malaysia, in the long run, the best hope for curbing undocumented immigrants does not lie in more effective enforcement or heavier court sentences, but in the efforts to regularize the recruitment of workers through bilateral arrangements with sending countries such as Bangladesh. Reports that the MoU with Indonesia -- our biggest supplier of foreign labor -- will finally be signed some time this month is good news, since most of the Indonesian workers are here illegally. It is vital, however, that the process for hiring foreign labor through such arrangements does not become too complex and too costly because this will discourage them from going through official passages.

-- New Straits Times, Kuala Lumpur