Every year there is AGM. One of the tasks is to discuss resolutions and motions for the party congress. Noted, that in the past few years, one of the resolution or motions from branch members (any PSM branch) is related to migrant workers. Their influx should be controlled, government should stop taking in migrant workers and that the migrants are taking away our jobs!
Over and over the counter argument is, our fundamental principal is ‘workers of the world unite’, how can we say, “Stop them from entering the country”. The bosses of the world are united. Globalization and neo liberalism further strengthening their clutches over workers, creating surplus army of workers, zero bargaining power for workers! Why workers are unable to join force, instead we feel threatened?
I am sure we all well aware that if our ancestors did not migrate from their first place of existence, Africa, today we cannot call ourselves Indian, Chinese, Mongolians, Europeans and so forth. It is human nature. Looking at human history, we started as nomadic and gradually settled down because in our quest to find new technology we change our environment. Villages become town and then nations. You already know how in the past and to date, trade, empire building, colonization, war, natural disaster and poverty is continuously making people move from one place to another.
Malaysia is a good example, besides the Indigenous people, I believe none of us have our origin in Malaya. Most of us are from parts of Indonesia, China, India, Portugese, Philippines, Thailand and Arab countries. Mix marriages are common and no longer can we say ‘pure Chinese or Malay’ – mixed DNA!
Quoting John Molyneux from his article, ‘Is human nature a barrier to socialism’, to subsist we need to meet our basic needs. We do that through collaborative social labour – change and development is an essential part of human nature.
Why migration became a concern? Why are we going against human nature? Why so many laws and regulations and why these laws are more pro-transnational business and the rich?
It was not wrong for the British to bring thousands of South Indian workers to Malaya to work in the rubber plantation or the Chinese workers to work in the tin mines, for minimal pay. No need for passport then, just a piece of paper. Now, we have passport and other documents that we have to verify and pay for before we cross borders. The governments today also have policy to bring in workers from other countries e.g. Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal and Vietnam. They can even have regulations to earn money (levy, permit) from these workers and place laws that would curb their rights and freedom – modern day slavery! The irony, the employers suck their labour, the government (and some other middle men) extorts their money and we the people add pain by socially alienating them – looking down at them as though we are the master and they are our serf!
I suppose Globalization was meant for the trades to reach all the countries without any trade barriers – people will have work opportunities in their own country and they don’t have to migrate for greener pasture. Something must have gone wrong with their plan, migration still happen massively and many are undocumented, further exposing them to greater exploitation. Refugees and asylum seekers number are also growing. 51.2 million people are displaced, of which 16.7 million are refugees, 1.2 million are asylum seekers and 33.3 were internally displaced. It’s the highest since World War II.
- Figures from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) show that 232 million people, or 3.2 per cent of the world’s population, live abroad worldwide, compared with 175 million in 2000 and 154 million in 1990. Compared to other regions of destination, Asia saw the largest increase of international migrants since 2000, adding some 20 million migrants in 13 years. This growth was mainly fuelled by the increasing demand for foreign labour in the oil-producing countries of Western Asia and in South-Eastern Asian countries with rapidly growing economies, such as Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. (11/9/2013)
- An estimated six million foreign migrants, most of them illegal, work in factories, plantations, restaurants, and other jobs largely shunned by more-affluent Malaysians. (Free Malaysia Today.com)
- The Malaysian construction industry provides employment opportunities for 800,000 workers, representing 8% of the total workforce; 69% of these are foreign workers. The employment of foreign workers has been concentrated within the agriculture, construction, and manufacturing sectors. (Elsevier.com)
- Between 2000 and 2010, Malaysia saw about one million citizens migrate which is a huge figure when the population is less than 30 million. About one-third of those who left were professionals. That means each day in that 10 years, 278 people migrated, and out of this figure, 84 of them were professionals. The World Bank report also said that if the situation was not addressed quickly, it would slow down the economy and halt the country’s development. (The Establishment Post.)
- Following are stats from Penang Monthly online portal (June 2014)
Table 1: Annual net wages in Malaysia compared to other countries, 2013
Table 2: Distribution of locals and immigrants in major occupations in Malaysia, 2012
by
Letchimi
Anjung Kiri 