RECENTLY in Parliament, a politician raised fears about the Rohingya community becoming padi and rice “towkays” in the country in areas where they are now managing padi fields across the country.

The politician claimed it happened because the local residents were not keen to work in padi fields and would rather allow Rohingya nationals to manage them.

Before this, there were Bangladeshis operating groceries, food and IT shops in Shah Alam, Salak South, Balakong and Sg Besi in KL, Nepalese dominating businesses in Jalan Silang in KL, Burmese in Kota Raya in KL and Indonesians dominating the Chow Kit and Segambut business areas.

Immigration has always been controversial in our country. Blaming immigrants for the nation’s woes has long been a Malaysian pastime, especially in hard economic times like today. Recently, there has been an upsurge in anti-immigrant sentiment.

This issue is often manipulated to protect the status quo. Raising fears in the public about immigrants has never failed and it has proven to be a winning formula for politicians in Malaysia.

One of the well-entrenched myths about immigrants is that they steal jobs from Malaysians and, in general, represent a drain on the economy. This has created xenophobia amongst a large segment of our rakyat.

This is the most persistent fallacy about immigration in popular thought because it is based on the mistaken assumption that there is only a fixed number of jobs in the economy. Immigrants are blamed for unemployment because Malaysians can see the jobs immigrants fill but not the jobs they create through productivity, capital formation and demand for goods and services.   

Immigrants to the country, for the last 20 years, tend to fill jobs that Malaysians cannot or will not fill, mostly at the low end of the skill spectrum. The jobs that migrant workers do are often so demanding for the locals that it now takes two locals to handle one migrant worker’s load. As such, the market has been functioning at less than 20% of its full capacity due to the manpower disruption.

Immigrants contribute mightily to the economy, by paying millions in service taxes, by filling low-wage jobs that keep the domestic industry competitive, and by spurring investment and job creation, revitalising once decaying communities. In fact, rather than drain government treasuries, immigrants contribute overall far more than they utilise in services.

Successive waves of immigrants have kept our country demographically young, enriched our culture and added to our productive capacity as a nation, enhancing our influence in the world.

It is sad that a majority of the public still succumb to this bait raised by individuals or groups due to their greed and for their own selfish interests. It is no surprise that many of us fear immigrants, thinking they are taking over and replacing them.

But, in truth, the system makes it so hard for immigrants to do so and to have equal opportunity. They live in constant fear of not knowing what’s going to happen to them. They also live in fear of having no voice or power to change what affects them the most.

The uncomfortable truth hurts. Economic concerns do not drive a fear of immigration. In other countries, what drives these people’s fears is the changing face of the country’s demographics, where their numbers are being reduced by the wave of immigrants.

With the continued discrimination against immigrants in our labour market, immigrants are ‘forced’ to become entrepreneurial and seek self-employment, identifying promising business ideas for themselves as a way for them to advance and improve on their lives in this country.

As these immigrants live in different cultures, they encounter new products, services, customer preferences, and communication strategies, and this exposure may allow the transfer of knowledge about customer problems or solutions from one country to another. By applying this kind of arbitrage, a temporary or permanent migrant can decide to replicate a profitable product or business model available in one country but not in another.

Specifically, the nation’s demographics are skewing toward a kaleidoscope of identities and it will continue to change, regardless.

Can we adapt to the fact that our future may look different from what we imagined?

If we reduce or eliminate the hope of improvement to future generations of immigrants, we not only attenuate the realisation of dreams, we alter the fabric of our identity as well.

We need to be courageous now more than ever, and nothing takes more courage than being honest.

Certainly, the population of migrant workers – whether documented or otherwise – who have contributed significantly to Malaysia’s economy is not undermining the Malaysian social fabric; it is an integral part of it.

In the future, Malaysians will look back upon the stretch of history as we know it today as a kind of embryonic stage in our development.

It looks impossible right now, but that’s the way of these things: first they look impossible, then they look possible, then they look probable, then they look inevitable, then they happen, and become what would be normal and expected. – December 2, 2021.

*FLK reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.