Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants

Malaysia Considers Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants

By LIZ GOOCH / New York Times

Published: June 7, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/business/global/08iht-amnesty08.html

It only solves part of the whole problem.

From indecisiveness to now welcoming the foreign workers, the government move to legalize the foreigners is laudable but what about the social and security aspects which we are known to be very weak as compared to the developed countries, just take for example in Sabah, the presence of large numbers of illegal immigrants with its social and cultural impacts on our society, notably on medical services and policing; has all the strong basis for our doubts and concerns.

With or without legalization, the capability and competency of our authority, and our capacity, to take on 4 millions of foreigners in a total population of 28 millions, is really no easy task, and I really have doubts that we could handle it without problems.

As if our problems not enough, our human resources under the ever controversial education system has not been producing the right types of workers especially on their competency in work; how are we going to depend on these new generation of workers to sustain the economy, or improve the economy?

The various transformations will not work if we don't have the good quality and competent human resources, and that we simply don't have them in the country, they have all gone for greener pastures elsewhere, and it's not easy to attract them back once migrated.

Despite all that, do we have a better choice? Would higher pay will salvage the situation?

I think We are simply stuck in a dilemma, and the problem is largely of our governance which I think will be the only solution to overcome all the various issues arising from the efforts to resolve the country's woes.