In Malaysia, illegal Indonesians need not apply

Robertus Domingus shrugs when asked who he's angrier with: Malaysia, for forcing him to flee a job he held in that country for three years, or Indonesia, his native land, for doing so little to make it easier to find work at home.

"I want to work over there because the pay is a little better, but it's not as if I like it,'' says Mr. Domingus, squatting among a cluster of friends on a corner in Nunukan, a tumbledown Indonesian town on the border with the Malaysian state of Sabah. "People like me are left with no choice."

Domingus is one of an estimated 300,000 Indonesian and at least 60,000 Filipino workers who fled Malaysia at the end of July as new draconian laws came into effect mandating the caning and jailing of illegal workers.

The flight from the country has left tens of thousands in squalid camps on both sides of the border. In Nunukan, health officials say 72 refugees have died so far from ailments ranging from malaria to diarrhea.

The disorganized stampede spotlights a developing trend in a rapidly globalizing world: The migration of workers from very poor nations to wealthier, but still poor, neighbors. "I think most people would agree that this has been happening for a long time, but is also an increasing trend in the world,'' says Bruce Reed of the Philippine office of the International Organization for Migration. He estimates that in Asia, 2.6 million workers – about 50 percent of them from Southeast Asia – go abroad every year.

The deportation of many of these workers has cost Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines their good relations.

One Filipino senator called the treatment of Filipino workers abroad "ethnic cleansing.'' And Indonesian Parliament Speaker Amien Rais said Malaysia was treating Indonesians like "goats."

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar shot back that Mr. Rais "should bear responsibility for what is happening to his people, [because] a lot of people were thrown out of their jobs" due to economic policies Rais supported.

When Indonesia's economy collapsed in 1997, the number of job-seekers in Malaysia surged. The Indonesian Foreign Ministry estimates that before this summer's crackdown, there were probably 1 million Indonesians working in Malaysia, about half of them illegal. Because most did undesirable work, observers say the get-tough campaign was prompted, not by a desire to protect local jobs, but by fear of crime or disloyalty.

Accusations that Indonesians head an Al Qaeda-linked terror network in Southeast Asia have also worked against Indonesian migrants in Malaysia and elsewhere. Last Friday, a Manila newspaper said the Philippines would expel 12,000 illegal Indonesian immigrants in the south of the country because they could be harboring terrorists.

For Malaysia, protests by Indonesian construction workers and a riot in a detention center over living and working conditions early this year seemed to be the last straw. Shortly after, the new laws were announced – at first targeting Indonesians by ordering employers to take an "Indonesians last" approach to hiring. Though Malaysia has since struck the discriminatory language from its laws, the harsh punishments for illegal foreign workers remain.

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