http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5182294.stm


Last Updated: Friday, 14 July 2006, 21:51 GMT 22:51 UK

Malaysia drive to deport migrants
By Jonathan Kent
BBC News, Kuala Lumpar

Illegal workers
Indonesians are the largest group of illegal workers in Malaysia
Malaysia will launch a new operation to deport an estimated 500,000 illegal migrants from the country.

The interior minister says 100,000 reservists will be drafted in to help with the operation.

Previous attempts to drive out undocumented workers have led to allegations of human rights abuses.

Malaysia is torn between its dependency on foreign labour and the urge to blame illegal migrants for the country's ills, particularly crime.

Illegal immigration operations in August 2002 and March 2005 led to hundreds of thousands of workers, most of them Indonesian, fleeing to avoid being jailed, fined or whipped.

But according to the country's Interior Minister, Mohammed Rajid Sheikh Ahmad, some 500,000 undocumented workers remain in Malaysia - about 2% of the country's population.

Crackdown needed

He said that if the authorities did not act from time to time, illegal migrants would feel able to do as they wished.

No date has been set for the pending crackdown.

The government wants to see foreign labour, which accounts for up to a quarter of Malaysia's workforce, properly regulated.

However it has done little to reduce the demand which drives illegal immigration.

It rarely punishes errant employers, while the process of recruiting foreigners legally remains expensive and bureaucratic.

Human rights groups in Malaysia are likely to be alarmed by the news that volunteer reservists will once again play the key role in any anti-migrant operation.

The force, known as RELA, has been linked to a number of raids in which migrants died or suffered abuse.