How I wish that kicking out 150,000 illegals will do the trick. But you and I know that it’s not that simple. For a start, we know with absolute certainty that most of them will find their way back almost immediately. We don’t need any sophisticated amount of logic to reason out that their payoff for living here (illegally even) far outweigh the pains of coming here in the first place.
What’s a couple of canes across the butt.
Okay, so we have to do something quick because the SAPP is going to do their no confidence thing. And, wow!, it’s worth 50 million ringgit. I mean we can find better ways to spend that much money and get something positive out of it. How about spending 50 million to train 150 thousand Sabahans, to take the place of 150 thousand illegals.
How about giving that much to factories as incentives to employ locals. How about spending that much to improve the road to my kampung which we have been waiting for the past 40 odd years for. As for the 150,000 illegals, why, they can stay as long as they like; I beg your pardon, I mean let their employers send them back using their own money. That 50 million belongs to the rakyat.
What’s 150,000 when we have many many more “dubious” citizens in our midst. Now, that’s a real problem. If we had to spend 100 million Ringgit to solve it, I’d say that’s money well spent. Citizenship should not be something that suddenly drops from the sky, or like plucking leaves from trees.
We are challenged to be humane about these things, but the more humane thing should be caring about our immediate descendants. The way it looks at the moment is it’s everyone for himself. That is OK too; it’s a way to keep the stock sturdy, so that we’ll pass on a better gene. Then again, we come to the same crux; citizenship and by extension, the development of society, is not a game of chance.
Development is about managed change.
Many politicians do their coughing on the steps, ( it’s a Malay proverb). They think society will change for the better by simply dispensing advise for people to change their attitudes. People will change their attitudes when there is a good reason to. Like, people will cross seas, and climb mountains if there is a pot of gold at the end of the road.
Obviously there are pots and pots of gold in our country which attract people from across the seas to come over. How come we ourselves don’t see these pots.
The global worth of these pots of gold is estimated to be 300 billion USD a year. For those who still cannot see the pots for the plants, that’s the amount of money immigrants all over the world send back to their mother countries.
Some countries actually actively support the activities of their citizens in search of those pots of gold. The government of Mexico goes to the extent of providing maps and guidelines for would-be illegal cross-country hoppers.
Mexico shares a similarity with our nearest neighbours, in that their society has almost non-existent middle class. There are a few rich gringos and the rest are just – the masses.
To cut the story short, we are haven to these masses . And there are lessons to be learnt. The Phillipines has a literacy rate of over 92%, per capita income of USD 3,400 and 30% of its people live below the poverty line. Indonesia has a similar literacy rate, 3,700 per capita income and 17 % poverty.
Malaysia by contrast has a burgeoning middle class with per capita income of 13,300 and a poverty rate of only 5.1%. We are managing our economy well, and we can still do better.
In the end its not about getting rid of aliens. We will need labourers and skilled workers to make up for our own shortages, and we will need them well into the future. We need to pour in more resources to enhance managerial and technical skills. So our unemployed youths do not want to harvest palm oil fronds? So what. Challenge them to do better things. That’s our challenge.
There simply must be better ways to manage our “guests”. And I think Malaysians are up to it.
(Note: Published in Daily Express on 20 o7 08)
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