SunWuKong
08-20-2004, 09:51 AM
Malaysia's illegal worker boondoggle
By Ioannis Gatsiounis
KUALA LUMPUR - Every few years it seems the Malaysian government rallies to send home the million-plus foreigners working illegally in the plantation, construction and other manual labor sectors. The last such instance was in 2002, when some 500,000 Indonesians were deported, under the threat of lashings with the rattan and stiff jail sentences. What happened next, though, has become symptomatic of these campaigns. Malaysia made bad blood with its neighbors, raised eyebrows in the international community, spread xenophobia among its own, and now finds itself home to more illegal migrants than before the "crackdown".
Indeed, these workers - from various Asian countries, but mostly from Indonesia - are more conspicuous than any time since the last flood of them started entering Malaysia in the late 1970s; the total number of immigrant workers is estimated to have increased five-fold since then, to more than 2 million. Once resigned mostly to remote plantations, their faces shrouded anonymously in towels, now some run food stands at night markets, sell durians by the roadside and wait tables. Whole neighborhoods have become theirs.
The government has taken notice and last month said it would start large-scale deportations after September 20, the day of Indonesia's presidential election. On Wednesday, however, Malaysia announced it would wait until January, to address "technical constraints".
Regardless of when the action actually transpires, the question is, will the net effect be different this time? And what are the social and economic implications?
more... (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/FH20Ae03.html)
By Ioannis Gatsiounis
KUALA LUMPUR - Every few years it seems the Malaysian government rallies to send home the million-plus foreigners working illegally in the plantation, construction and other manual labor sectors. The last such instance was in 2002, when some 500,000 Indonesians were deported, under the threat of lashings with the rattan and stiff jail sentences. What happened next, though, has become symptomatic of these campaigns. Malaysia made bad blood with its neighbors, raised eyebrows in the international community, spread xenophobia among its own, and now finds itself home to more illegal migrants than before the "crackdown".
Indeed, these workers - from various Asian countries, but mostly from Indonesia - are more conspicuous than any time since the last flood of them started entering Malaysia in the late 1970s; the total number of immigrant workers is estimated to have increased five-fold since then, to more than 2 million. Once resigned mostly to remote plantations, their faces shrouded anonymously in towels, now some run food stands at night markets, sell durians by the roadside and wait tables. Whole neighborhoods have become theirs.
The government has taken notice and last month said it would start large-scale deportations after September 20, the day of Indonesia's presidential election. On Wednesday, however, Malaysia announced it would wait until January, to address "technical constraints".
Regardless of when the action actually transpires, the question is, will the net effect be different this time? And what are the social and economic implications?
more... (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/FH20Ae03.html)