Unwanted migrant workers
Unwanted migrant workers
At midnight tonight (July 31), time will be up for the
hundreds of thousands of undocumented Indonesians attempting to
eke out a living in Malaysia -- a living they have not been able
to find in their own homeland.
As of midnight harsh new laws will come into effect in
Malaysia that threaten "illegals" -- or undocumented migrant
workers from neighboring countries such as Bangladesh, the
Philippines, India and Indonesia -- caught in the country with
penalties including caning, imprisonment and heavy fines.
Under threat of such cruel penalties, about 200,000 Indonesian
workers were reported by the end of last week to have taken
advantage of an amnesty offered by the Malaysian government to
leave the country before the deadline expires. Indonesian
officials in Jakarta, too, were reported to be doing all they
could to repatriate the unfortunate workers.
How many illegal Indonesian workers there are, or were, in
Malaysia is obviously not precisely known. After all, they are
"illegals" who have slipped into the country by either air, sea
or land, without documentation.
Whatever the case may be, and however many of them there may
be, their cases are tragic. The most tragic thing about it all,
of course, is that their own homeland, Indonesia, has proven
unable to provide these people with a decent livelihood. If this
was true even in the best of times, it is even more so after the
Asian financial crisis hit more than five years ago and plunged
Indonesia into a catastrophe that can truly be called
multidimensional.
On the other side of the coin, Malaysia's desire to protect
its own labor force and keep wages on an even keel is
understandable enough given the circumstances prevailing in the
world. Nevertheless, the wisdom of treating illegal or
undocumented immigrant workers with such harshness must be
questioned.
Traditionally, people on both sides of the border that
separates Malaysia from Indonesia have crossed these borders for
many generations. More to the point in the present case, though,
is that in the longer run Malaysia's act of forcing hundreds of
thousands of people back to their own countries will not benefit
that country or for that matter the region.
Poverty breeds trouble and an Indonesia that is destabilized
by trouble certainly cannot benefit either Malaysia or the
region. Rather than forcibly sending migrant workers home, Kuala
Lumpur could do better by talking the situation through with its
neighbors.
As for Jakarta, the current plight of Indonesian "illegals" in
Malaysia had better be a wake up call to its leaders to the great
urgency of putting its own house in order.