FEBRUARY 18 — Malaysia has to be the most xenophobic multicultural country in the world. It has to be, if one reads online reports, comments and blog posts. 

How can people who live in a nation of 33 official races — and a multitude of migrant workers bringing much truth to the fat claim “Malaysia Truly Asia” — find so much revulsion to further entries of foreigners to earn a fair wage in exchange for fair labour? Are Malaysians not used to people not looking like them and not sounding like them?

The truth is, as usual, in between.

Malaysians are not feverishly xenophobic as much as victims of unplanned, rarely thought-out and insensitive policies to achieve “other” goals.

The large number already present in the country suggests strongly that while there is much nonsense, there is enough polity in the population to allow the “United Colours of Benetton” to literally flourish.

What to make of Home Minister Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi’s pronouncement that up to 1.5 million Bangladeshis may be on their way here?

Let’s lay out some of the key considerations then, before deciding.

The negatives

Migrant entry has to match what Malaysia can accommodate and not based purely on market forces.  

Which forces the question, are all the checks in place to ensure a proper process? At a cursory level, knowing that the minister is serious about allowing in a large number of foreigners at a time he acknowledges that the current number of undocumented foreigners is high — and has instructed the immigration department to register foreigners already working without documents so they can be counted — does cause concern.

If workers can be signed on anytime without papers and “legalised” later, then I have to agree that Malaysia is the land of “endless possibilities.”

Surely, the security agencies would have raised red flags as Bangladesh of late has been seen as a region with increased radicalisation [N1], no less heated up with the decades long tug of war between sides aligned to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and ex-PM Khaleda Zia.

More than a million workers is a gargantuan number, will Malaysia rely solely on Bangladeshi authorities to filter?

Secondly, social cost has to be considered. This is not to add to the spurious arguments against any peoples, but to ensure there is adequate cover for all. Blue-collar worker Jamal may be employed at a restaurant during his shift, but where will he live? Each migrant settlement with high male composition offers different challenges, are they being mitigated with useful policies? 

The 2016 Budget already spelt out that foreigners have to pay full rates at government hospitals. If foreigners are employed to keep wages low, it would follow that any health coverage would be low or non-existent. In that situation there would be a substantial number of workers vulnerable without medical care, how to plug this gap?

The golden age of Malaysian manufacturing was aided by low wages and not high automation — or gradual but still assured automation over time. Therefore the solution has been sourcing workers from abroad willing to accept work conditions and wages rather than calibrating the industries to match the changing face of employees and prevailing fair wages.

A further million plus over the millions already stationed in the country points to bad faith. New foreign workers should not be leverage to either sustain a low wage floor therefore barring Malaysians with families here from those opportunities, or disincentivise local corporations from necessary automation or value additions which can gel with wage aspirations of locals. 

If wages are high enough, companies will find ways to do more with less people and feel justified with the pay because a combination of brawn and brain is initiated. For example, x-number of cities overseas are operating with garbage collection vehicles operated by single persons. Malaysian trash collecting companies won’t follow suit, they will be operating with innumerable foreigners as long as they can hire cheap, squeeze out more hours and ignore other advancements.

As long as low wage is the only game, then broad level innovations will be slow to show up.

Foreign workers at a construction site in Kuala Lumpur, February 18, 2016. ― Picture by Yusof Mat Isa

Respect is not optional

While the state can be exacting before approving new economic migrants, it cannot as a symbol of its authority disrespect migrants, any migrants, or allow its citizens to openly disrespect communities here legally serving the economy.

They are building the economy just like the rest of us.

I have seen local boys, lads as young as 15, shouting, taunting and physically abusing foreigners because if enforcement agencies get involved in an altercation between locals and foreigners it won’t end well for the foreigners.

The state has to protect all consistent to natural law, or every person’s sense of protection becomes questionable since there is no consistency to act in the right way when the right thing is obvious.

This reminds me of the last general election when much consternation over new voters was the craze. I was working for the side for just reasons paranoid about these possible voters but I would be quick to admit that we were on the fringes of overreacting.  There were many we considered friends urging physical restraint for those they felt looked like suspect Malaysians.

Of course the fear of “convenient, overnight voters” is a threat to our democracy, but isn’t there more to be lost if in our overzealousness we accept vigilantism?

If there is truth in “easy” identity cards being dished out it would be difficult for menial labourers always at the mercy of the police, immigration, city hall, RELA and a list of other agencies to reject them. Those ICs may be the difference between peace and deportation. Right or wrong.

And to our local moral-purveyors cringing about local women being seduced by these men, they should get stuffed.  If the dude works for minimum wage and longest hours, possesses no private space, rides the bus, just learnt the language and moves carefully to avoid harassment from local men, can still attract a local girl, then good on him.

Cross-cultural relationships are only good if Malaysian men are one-half of it?

Why not consider the other narrative?

Of the story of the powerful exploiting the weakest to continue subjugating the weaker masses — in our case desperate foreigners as pawns set against the interests of the larger less empowered masses.

A rich man does not care if the man polishing his shoe can spell “proletariat” in the sentence ending with “senseless, unceasing suppression of a class with little means to defend itself”?

Judging without hating

The messy triangle of migrants, economic protection and social justice complicates most resource-rich nations like Malaysia.

While the answer will be a combination resulting in some migrants, enough protections even if unfair and unnerving social realities, Malaysia leaders cannot hope to overcome the situation with sheer opportunism alone.

Migration policies are determining the fate of nations these days and perhaps those who decide have to look beyond what benefits which political objective seemingly in the short or long run.

These are hard equations to master, to navigate between real fears and possible progress.  Any decision must be compatible with national interest and human decency.

Perhaps some guidance from Bangladesh’s national anthem’s lyricist Rabindranath Tagore. [N2]

He could have verily been speaking about Malaysia: “Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.”

N1 Late 2015, Singapore arrested 27 blue-collar Bangladeshi workers and deported them on the basis of being radicalised as reported by the Straits Times. The British government is in talks with Bangladesh to cope with their nationals considered as “problematic.”

N2 While the proud Bengali came from the Indian side of the carved up Bengal state, his family had their estates in Bangladesh. And the country reframed from the old East Pakistan readily claims him as its own.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.