Foreigners and Social Ills

While reading the report on the slow start to the biometric registration of foreign workers in Malaysia, Many still confused over Alien registration I came across these reports of crime where foreigners are also involved. In Vietnamese kill two roommates several Vietnamese had a fight over a petty matter, and two were killed, while in the report about a car theft, Car theft suspect shot dead. the Pakistani robber was shot dead for resisting arrest.

I cannot but feel, after reading this (the reported incidents) that our nation is beginning to experience the ill effects of arbitrarily and easily allowing for 'any kind' of foreign labour to come and work in the country. Not long ago, it seems that the only foreigners who maybe involved in petty crimes are the Indonesians, who through easy access to our country have come in droves, abetted most probably by immoral agents and corrupt Immigration officials.

Now it seems that crime in this country has taken an 'international hue'. Besides the two cases reported in your papers today, we have read all too frequently, drug trafficking arrests of Iranians and Africans, and illegal social 'business' monopolised by the Chinese, Thais, Indonesians, and Filipinas, among other things. We too have heard about gang clashes between groups of poorly paid Indonesians and Bangladeshis at construction sites.

All these have exacted a very high cost from our nation, such as large increases in police work to monitor and minimise such crimes. Other costs are not so direct, but the millions of foreigners also tax our natural resources like drinking water and living quarters, and because they do not feel any "ownership" of the country, they treat it as one massive garbage dump. All these just because Malaysians do not want to pay reasonable wages for work done, or are too pampered to do menial work.

With the biometric registration of the millions of foreigners, even though we are trying to make sure we can control the problem of too many illegal workers in the country, we seem to be acknowledging the fact that we are willing to pay a high price for the "convenience" of cheap labour.

I am not too sure if, by doing this, we are on the right road to a high income nation. Even our neighbour is now beginning to feel dragged down by the social ills of the unmitigated influx of ungrateful foreigners.

Paying the price for cheap foreign labour