37 Bangladeshis held in Malaysia crackdown

Authorities
detained 403 foreigners on Sunday from Melaka for entering the country without
valid documents and overstaying, according to national news agency
Bernama.

Of them, 203 are Indonesian, 100 from Myanmar, 63 Nepalese, 21
Bangladeshis, 10 Indians and six Vietnamese.

A local man was also
detained for harbouring the illegals.

In Sungai Petani, another 130
illegals, including 10 females, were detained on similar charges earlier in the
day.

Of them, 58 are from Myanmar, 45 Indonesians, 16 Bangladeshis, six
Nepalese, four Pakistanis and one Indian, the news agency
reported.

Twelve others were detained from Kampar for similar offences.
They include Indonesians, Bangladeshi and Pakistanis.

File Photo

Another 101
undocumented people were held in a similar raid in Johor Baharu. They include 72
Cambodian, 22 Vietnamese, four from Myanmar and two Indonesians.

Sunday's
raid targeted those who registered under an amnesty programme two years ago but
did not go through further processing including legalisation and voluntary
deportation.

During the three-month registration ending October 2011,
around 1.3 million of the estimated two million undocumented expatriate workers
had registered.

Of them, 330,000 were deported and legalisation
applications of 500,000 were processed.

"In the first phase of this
operation that will continue until this year-end, we plan to arrest and deport
about 400,000 illegal immigrants and arrest about 45,000 employers of such
workers," Saravana Kumar, a deputy-director at the Immigration Department, was
quoted as saying by The Wall Street Journal.

According to Kumar, around
1,000 migrant workers were detained during Sunday's nationwide
crackdown.

Expatriates make up over 16 percent of Malaysia's total
workforce.

Malaysia, one of Southeast Asia's richest countries, is a
major attraction for migrant workers in the region.

Expatriate workers
contribute much to Bangladesh's economy by sending back enormous amount of
remittances that touched $ 14 billion last fiscal.

Bangladesh had
recently inked a deal with Malaysia to send workers under the government to
government (G2G) agreement.

Several batches of workers had already been
sent to the country under this arrangement but many still try to make it
illegally.

A good number of them are Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who
flee into Bangladesh to avoid persecution and then try reaching Malaysia in
leaky boats to start life anew.

http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/37-bangladeshis-held-in-malaysia-crackdown/