AMNESTY TO HELP SOLVE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

By Sajad Hussein

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 6 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian Trades Union Congress
(MTUC) Friday called on the government to declare a general amnesty for illegal
immigrant workers as part of its solution to reduce foreigners in the local job
market.

Currently there are about 1.2 million illegal foreign workers competing for
the same jobs with Malaysians.

MTUC vice-president K. Balasubramaniam told Bernama that an amnesty would be
a win-win solution because it would benefit both the foreign and local workers.

"Thousands of illegal foreigners want to go back to their country of origin
but are afraid that they may be detained by the authorities because many of them
have no proper travel documents.

"If there is an amnesty, these workers can get a reprieve and be sent home
without any penalty. And once they leave, jobless Malaysians will have the
opportunity to fill the vacancies," he said.

Amnesty is nothing new to Malaysia as the government had declared one
for illegals in 2004. The amnesty from Oct 29 2004 to Jan 31 2005 was successful
in that almost 400,000 illegal immigrants were repatriated.

Balasubramaniam was confident that an amnesty during this economic downturn
would also yield results.

He said that, as in the previous amnesty, all costs of repatriation should
be borne either by the workers, their employers or their country of origin.

The MTUC was willing to cooperate with the authorities to ensure an orderly
exercise.

The Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF), however, is not very keen on the
idea.

"We feel that an amnesty would encourage more illegals to come to Malaysia,
knowing that they could get a reprieve if they overstayed or came in without any
legal documents," said its executive director, Haji Shamsuddin Bardan.

A better solution would be to tighten security at all entry points to ensure
that no one sneeked into the country.

He said the private sector was heeding the government's directive to employ
Malaysians first unless there were no locals available for the job.

Meanwhile, Director-General of Immigration Mahmood Adam said amnesty was a
policy decision of the cabinet acting on the advice of the Home Ministry.

"As far as my department is concerned, it will only carry out and implement
the directives of the ministry and ensure a proper repatriation of the
foreigners." he said, adding that the department was continuing its routine
checks to flush out illegal immigrants.

On the compounding of passports of certain Malaysians, he said that so far
the department had blacklisted 15,000 passport holders and they could not leave
the country without permission.

The ban was imposed for various reasons, like not settling their income tax,
legal cases and custody disputes.
Passport holders could check their status via the department's website:
www.imi.gov.my.

To protect the confidentially, the reasons for the ban were not disclosed on
the website but those affected could call any of the immigration offices for
details, he added.
-- BERNAMA