Malaysia, RP step up cooperation vs illegal immigration

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AFP) — Malaysia and the Philippines pledged Thursday to step up cooperation against illegal immigration.

"With the two governments working together, it will help the workers a lot. It will make things orderly, manageable and eventually we will try to eradicate the problem of illegals," Malaysian Home Affairs Minister Azmi Khalid told reporters after talks with Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo.

About 108 Filipinos are among hundreds detained since Malaysia on Tuesday began a crackdown on illegal immigrants after the end of a four-month amnesty.

Romulo said two "one-stop" processing centers were set up in January in Zamboanga and Bongao on Tawi-tawi island in southern Philippines to enable documented Filipino laborers to return to Malaysia to work, and more would be established.

Neighboring Indonesia has already set up similar centers to speed up the processing of work permits for its citizens to return to Malaysia.

A high-level Malaysian mission will visit Manila on Monday to discuss ways to ensurea "humane and orderly process complying with the laws of Malaysia and also meeting the needs of our people to find employment provided they are documented," Romulo said, expressing satisfaction that the Filipinos detained in Malaysia’s crackdown were being "treated fairly and in a humane way."

Up to half a million Filipinos live in Malaysia, many of them families of refugees who fled a separatist rebellion on the Mindanao region of southern Philippines in the 1970s.

Manila estimates that up to 200,000 are staying there illegally, mostly in Sabah state on Borneo island which is close to southern Philippines.

Malaysia on Tuesday began to round up, whip and deport hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, detaining more than 600 foreigners so far, mostly Indonesians.

Azmi said 23 French nationals picked up for breaching their visitors’ visas would be released as they have shown evidence of applying for permits to work in the shipping sector and were awaiting the documents.

Malaysia has estimated there were nearly a million illegal workers in the country, mostly from Indonesia but also from the Philippines, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

About 382,000 took advantage of the amnesty, which started at the end of October, to depart without penalty but an estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants remain, many of whom sought jobs in the construction, plantation and service industries in the face of unemployment at home.