Malaysian ambassador Taufik Mohamed Noor stressed that Filipinos who comprise a big number of the illegals were not being singled out, and that Kuala Lumpur was not the first country in Southeast Asia to mete out corporal punishment.
The problem has become "so serious" that parliament passed amendments to the Immigration Act of 1963 to make whipping mandatory for illegal immigrants and those who brought and harbored them, Taufik told a media forum here.
"For the first offense it will be three lashes of the cane. The second offense will be six times."
Taufik said Malaysia expected human rights groups to raise a howl, but said the government was "ready" for it.
Taufik said there are now "more than a million" illegal immigrants in Malaysia, including 400,000 Filipinos mainly in Sabah state on Borneo island.
Their presence put tremendous pressure on the government’s capacity to provide basic services, while some also committed serious crimes such as rape and murder. It "costs quite a lot to sustain them," he said.
The foreign office has informed its Manila mission that the whipping punishment would take effect "in about two or three months," Taufik said.
"We are not the first country to do that. Singapore has done it, we’ve seen that it worked well in Singapore," he said.
As the majority of the illegals in Sabah are Filipinos, "it would look as if the Filipinos are being targeted but that is not so," he said.
He said the law also applied to other foreign illegals from countries such as China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Thailand, and even from African countries.
For many Filipinos and Indonesians, "Malaysia is a land of opportunity for them for the simple reason that economic developments (back home) and the lack of manpower in Malaysia itself" is fueling the mass migration, he said.
While Malaysia has reached "some kind of agreement" to stem the tide of Indonesian and Thai economic migrants, it was still sending home about 2,800 Filipino illegals every month.
Taufik said his government did not expect the problem to abate while civil unrest continued in the southern Philippines.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has played an enthusiastic host to long-running peace negotiations between the Philippine government and Muslim separatist guerrilla groups operating in the Mindanao region of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines.
"Apart from the economic conditions, for their safety they will run, and they have blood ties with Malaysian families in Sabah," Taufik said.
"This vital question of peace and security has to be addressed."
Taufik urged Manila to open a consulate in Sabah immediately, reciprocating Kuala Lumpur’s opening of a consulate in Mindanao in 1996 as agreed at a 1995 joint commission meeting of the two countries.
He said President Arroyo had proposed that it open an economic and cultural office in the state capital, Kota Kinabalu, instead.
"(But) we would rather have them open a consulate general in Sabah for the simple reason that if you don’t have diplomatic status you cannot function effectively." – AFP