JULY 9 — When immigration and police do their annual roundup at any Kuala Lumpur entertainment stretch, the illegals make a dash for it.
It’s helter-skelter as many flee and those caught are pressed up into transport vehicles. They plead and cry. No one wants to end up in our detention camps.
However, in all the humdrum and crashing of high stools, one group is detached from consequence or the pain — the joints’ owners. Why not change that?
Employers, investors, entrepreneurs or cold, calculated capitalists, whatever they are called, they form the demand side of illegals in Malaysia.
Much is made of the supply side, and how to treat the illegal supply when apprehended, yet, little mentioned about those driving demand.
Amends must be made at both ends of demand and supply to be workable. But with haste, I hope.
The labour market, in this post-lockdown era, is Malaysia’s most intractable economical problem. An already shrinking market further decimated by a pandemic, seeks to recover in the face of migrant over-supply.
Official statistics show more than two million non-locals with papers. But the tally jumps steeply when illegals are included; insiders dare say it crosses six million in total.
Resentment currently builds against foreigners, and burrows deeper conversely to the swelling unemployment figures. Deep enough, the teeming anger born from resentment threatens to blow out volcanic lava of hatred.
As evidenced by the comment sections of migrant news reports burning with vitriol.
How did Malaysia end up in this position of possessing close to no control over foreign workers?
The situation would not have escalated to the size it has if employers were held accountable.
The low-cost economy
As sunset beckoned on Malaysia to proceed as a “wage-competitive” economy in the 1980s, relative to its neighbours, the government turned to foreign workers to keep the wage-bill low.
Malaysia’s young population, oil prosperity and export-wealth, allowed for seamless — or at least uncontentious — entry of foreign labourers. Alas, from being a short-term solution for a country transitioning, it became a crutch.
Manufacturing, construction, plantation and eventually hospitality, the bulwark of the economy became firmly entrenched with foreign labour. Regardless of whether over-eager supply or unscrupulous agents led the process, employers lapped up foreign workers, legal or otherwise. Profits were there to be won!
It forces the question: has foreign labour been the number one method for employers to suppress national wages — including minimum wage ceilings?
Though if businesses are asked, most claim suitability rather than cost today. I’m not quick to agree.
A friend claimed over lunch, locals cannot stand the smell inside of a glove factory — which Malaysia globally dominates together with condoms.
Before, there was a smallholder rubber processing shop in my area and it was difficult to just stand outside it, let alone inside. Perhaps, it might be outlandish to claim, but perhaps rubber manufacturing emits a foul odour, and the foreigners endure it out of economic desperation rather than from possessing superior in-built natural sensory walls.
And maybe the solution is to improve work conditions and to offer hazard pay rather than accuse blue-collared Malaysians of having the disposition of regular human beings.
Or as another friend shared a day later, plantation work was too hard for Malaysians. Laying fertilisers, picking oil palm fruits and fending off cobras, I can’t tell what’s not to like!
But why are owners not squeezed enough, to reward plantation workers better? Instead of reprimands from millionaires with children in prep schools telling other people’s children to just suck it up in the sweltering heat of the tropics.
The principle arguments
I want to answer concerns that Malaysia is too selfish and thinks only of itself.
Human rights advocates argue for the protection of migrants, illegals included. Human decency requires us to not assume this role lightly. Expediency cannot excuse robbed dignity, or worse life.
In short, we can’t throw people into the sea when they’ve served their purpose or are surplus to needs. Or despise them when they are already here.
However, can this country cope with the foreign migrant size confronting it?
The enormity of the present challenge is from prolonged casual government reaction to the foreign labour explosion — the bulk of it in the first Mahathir Administration.
Nevertheless, we must avoid submerging ourselves in historical regrets or enthusiasm to condemn previous governments, and instead offer ways forward to the present government.
As a start, unyieldingly, hold steadfast to the creed countries serve their citizens' interests first. It’s non-negotiable. It’s how democracies remain operational.
A humane process to ease the oversupply of foreign workers must happen, but the demand Malaysia has an obligation to protect jobs equally for Malaysians and non-Malaysians is misguided.
Punish the beneficiaries
The column asks for our authorities to punish employers who hire illegal foreigners.
The severing of the foreign worker umbilical cord at Selayang Pasar, the country’s largest market, sets the tone for continued pressure to ease out reliance on migrant labour.
Malaysia has invested in biometrics and traces people from entry to exit utilising the technology. How difficult would it be to ask companies to register all employees, and assist enforcement agencies to recognise those without documents? Using biometrics, thumbprints or just physical scrutiny of passports and work permits.
Presumably, the undocumented four million workers must either work for Malaysians, with Malaysians or both. Only a sliver is in the informal sector.
Penalties for business owners, criminal charges not the least, changes the game.
When business owners risk jail for hiring illegals, they literally now know they have skin in the game.
The business lobby in the country is strong and neither Perikatan Nasional or Pakatan Harapan dare upset corporates who’ve fuelled much of the problem but unwilling to be responsible for them.
Instead they are happy to see the local workers seething at foreign workers — documented and not — when jobs disappear.
But if the government does heed to the growing disenchantments of the rakyat and their anguish with job losses till well into 2021, then they know how to pick the lock better. Cut the demand.
