The Year of Living Dangerously for Undocumented Migrant Workers

BEING AN UNDOCUMENTED migrant worker has always been a risk and this year is getting more dangerous living as one in the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions. What is more known publicly and internationally are the crackdowns again in Malaysia and South Korea but not those in the Middle East and Taiwan.

Ironically some of the countries who would attend the upcoming Global
Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) in Manila are those who are leading said
crackdowns on said workers.

Going now to Malaysia, its government has announced that it is hell bent on arresting and deporting 100,000 – 150,000 undocumented migrants this year particularly in thestate of Sabah.

It had been reported in the Borneo Post that from January to May this year that 7,233illegal immigrants had been repatriated back to their respective countries.

This includes 4,281 Filipinos, 2,771 Indonesians and 181 of other nationalities. There are a reported 1.3 million undocumented workers in Malaysia.

The Philippine government’s response to this has been pathetic. Vice President
Noli de Castro who would most probably run as the next administration bet in the
coming Presidential elections in 2010 suggested that Malaysia postpone the
crackdown until after the Ramadan.

The Muslim holy festival starts on September 1. The Year of Living Dangerously for
Undocumented Migrant Workers Malaysia’s crackdown is known for its cruelty with a paramilitary group called Rela allowed to arrest and detain undocumented migrants.

Pastcrackdowns resulted in migrants being arbitrarily arrested with a big number
being caned; put in crowded and filthy detention centers where children and
some adults died as a result of this; and put on overcrowded ships. Predictably
this would once more occur. Not to be outdone, the ongoing crackdown in South Korea resembles in cruelty to that of Malaysia’s by using tasers (electroshock weapons) and
electric stun guns in rounding up migrant workers. South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak himself gave the order for the crackdown last February and immigration authorities were given quotas of 3,000 arrests and deportations monthly. Earlier it had twice arrested and deported the leadership of the Migrant Trades Union (MTU) which is an affiliate of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).

Taiwan which had 23,502 absconders as of June 2008 seems to benefit from its international isolation by silently cracking down on the former. Last year it
had attained its target of arresting and The crackdown, abuse, and torture of undocumented migrants has earned the ire of groups in many countries. In
the Philippines, Migrante International held a rally in front of Korean Embassy in Manila together with some of the returned undocumented migrants and their families.

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