At least 37 Bangladeshis have been detained in raids in Malaysia during a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigrants.
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.
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.
Source: bdnews24
