May I have a decent immigration policy, please?

Hizami Iskandar, November 24, 2007

English, Hizami, Columns |

Remember the 10th of November. Remember that freedom of assembly is our right, and the tales endorsed even by the official history, of the people of Malaya rising up on the streets against the British. See Tricia’s piece. And please read Nat’s piece on Hindraf - I know it made me want to walk on Sunday, and hopefully it’ll do the same for you. We owe that to our Indian brothers and sisters, too long left on the wayside. Long live the rakyat.

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It’s long been apparent that a vicious undercurrent of xenophobia runs through Malaysian society, cheerfully whipped up by the mainstream press, and championed by a worrying spectrum of individuals. Unsurprising, perhaps, considering how central race is to our lives. Remember Nik Nazmi’s piece about the Hari Raya khutbah which had the imam railing against foreigners who were imposing on our ‘hospitality’? Or the panicky TV3 reports on ‘immigrants’ flooding KLCC during public holidays, and Wong Chun Wai’s editorial on how ‘uncomfortable’ it was to see so many foreigners (the wrong sort - Mat Salleh are perfectly fine) around town? The obligatory newspaper reports connecting ‘illegals’ to the most recent crime? The seemingly endless trail of abuse left by Rela and over-zealous police officers towards foreigners? The off-hand way we shut illegal immigrants up in appalling detention camps, and dismiss any notion that when they ‘riot’, it might be because we treat them little better than dirt? Or the casual racism which can be found everywhere, from the blasting of tall, dark Africans on Petaling Street, to the perennial notion that we should be helping our ‘own’ poor, not filthy Burmese or Indonesian illegals. Welcome to Malaysia.

‘All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action.’

From the Prophet Muhammad’s p.b.u.h. last sermon.

Just like terrorism, (if you haven’t yet, please read Sheikh Afifi al-Akiti’s truly remarkable fatwa on the illegality of suicide bombings from the Shafii’ jurisprudential perspective) I have never understood how any Muslim can reconcile racism with their religious faith. Not after the above piece, and the complete and total rejection of any sense of racism, racial chauvinism or racial superiority. How much clearer can it get? The incompatibility of Islam and Malay chauvinism has been done to death, so I won’t go into that today. But I would like to talk about xenophobia and migration, and I hope it’s clear that from where I stand, my faith in no way allows that imam to get away with what he said; neither does it allow me to be anything other than incredibly unhappy about the way Malaysia approaches its migrants.

Migration policy isn’t easy. Every country which is better off than others will have to grapple with immigration. And no one does it perfectly either. The US has hang-ups over Latinos; the UK has hang-ups over everyone, apparently; Australia has hang-ups over their ‘boat people’; and Europe as a whole has hang-ups over Muslims. But that’s no excuse for us to not try and do right by those who come to our country looking for a better life.

I don’t have a complete immigration policy ready to be tabled. But we do need to find one. And I would submit that there are a few crucial points we have to flag up, that will form the basis for any policy we eventually come up with.

The first is the illegitimacy of bigotry, and remembering our common humanity. We sometimes speak of ‘illegals’ almost as if they were sub-human. They’re not. Immigrants, whether illegal or otherwise, are as human as you and I. We’re not any superior to them - any one who dares to talk about ‘cultural superiority’ should remember that all these immigrants are descendants of civilisations at least as great as our own, if not even greater. Those who speak of ‘brutish’ Africans, for example, should remember that at one point, Timbuktu was a centre of learning outshining by far the ‘great’ universities of Oxford and Paris. Immigration policy cannot be coloured by notions that ‘we’ are any better than ‘them’.

This then leads to a requirement of decency. We have to treat our fellow human beings decently (lest I portray the wrong impression, animals deserve our decency too). That has implications, from making sure that our detention centres are humane, and that anyone we detain there can be repatriated in a very short time; to ending once and for all the legacy of abuse towards immigrants detained during raids.

Being decent means no more dilly-dallying - we have to ratify the Refugee Convention NOW. We have done wrong by refugees for too many years now. Those fleeing from persecution in their homelands should never simply classified as ‘illegal immigrants’ and deported post-haste. If we can take them, and keep them safe, we should. If we can’t, we need to be part of an international system to make sure they get somewhere where they can be safe. This is basic decency.

Decency and sense also means examining our economic treatment of immigrants. It’s an open secret that immigrants are paid less than local workers, and don’t get benefits. This is a travesty. This is why they don’t want minimum wage legislation. This is unacceptable. They contribute just as much to our economy, and we want to pay them less? Past time for a universal minimum wage.

I don’t know how much crime is really committed by immigrants, and how much of it is just moral panic whipped up by an unscrupulous Press. But whatever the level is, I would submit that just as it is with crime committed by Malaysians, crime is a function of deprivation. It wouldn’t surprise me that some immigrants are driven to crime – just like our own poor, deprivation will lead to crime.

Being tough on the causes of crime isn’t excusing it – it’s dealing with it. It’s recognised that you can’t just prosecute everyone (not that we do that anyway), we also need to deal with the poverty that drives people to crime anyway. The breakdown of families. Unemployment. The lack of community, and of decent futures. If all you can see around you is a life of deprivation, or a life of crime, the conclusion is irresistible. This is all basic stuff. And it means if we want to get serious about crime, we have to tackle deprivation, and that includes the ghettos that immigrants live in at the moment. Appalling living conditions, lack of basic infrastructure, lack of integration into the wider community, these are all problems of deprivation that need to be tackled.

At this point, warning signals will blare. Do we have the resources for all this? That is a question we’ve successfully evaded by treating immigrants as lesser than we are. We have to proceed from the premise that immigrants who are either here by reason of persecution, or have come here to contribute to our economy, deserve a basic standard of life equal to our own. That means that we need to provide the infrastructure. And we should accept as many immigrants not just as we need, but also as many as we can support. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. We can’t keep relying on cheap foreign labour to support the economy by the back door – if they’re helping us, we have to help back.

You might call it a market distortion. Yes, it is. Economies have traditionally depended on less well-treated foreign labour. But I say that is a price not worth paying. We have to be different, even if it means not growing as fast as we could be, otherwise.

Malaysians deserve a guaranteed basic standard of life. But so do our immigrants. And we also have to recognise that some of these immigrants will also become Malaysians. That’s how a country grows. Instead of living in denial, we should structure a proper policy, taking into account both immigrants who intend to stay here in the long term, and who should be integrated as Malaysians, and those who are just staying here for a while, who should get the same decent treatment we seek to extend to our own citizens as well. I don’t think we have that sort of policy yet. It’s time we started asking the hard questions, and taking a long, hard look at our economy, our resources, our long-term needs, and structuring a policy revolving around both our economic needs, and our obligation of common humanity. Nothing less will suffice.

PS. The discussion above doesn’t mention it, but that basic decent standard of life is being denied to a lot of Malaysians, not least of which our Indian community, our Sabah and Sarawak bumiputras, and our Orang Asli, not to mention the poor Malays, Chinese,… there’s a lot left to do. But the fact that there’s still a lot of Malaysians we have to do right for doesn’t lessen the imperative for us to do right by our immigrants too. The dream remains one of a decent life for all the residents of this nation (and the world, too), Malaysians and visitors alike.

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