BEING raised in urban, middle class Malaysia, you would probably go through the experience of having either a Filipino or Indonesian maid. If you have ever worked in the plantations and manufacturing sector, you would have interacted more with migrant workers than anyone else for at least 8 hours a day.

If you have worked with plantations, manufacturing, retail and even the food and beverage industries, chances are you’ve worked alongside migrant workers and even learned to appreciate their work ethic.

Malaysia has been importing labour and has had foreign trading communities absorbed into the very fabric of Malaysian society since we were separate Malay Sultanates at war with one another.

After all, history teaches us that even politicians and royalty are tied one way or another with the migration from multiple nations – including a certain Bugis warrior.

Thus, we have to ask ourselves, where does the animosity for foreign labour come from in this current generation?

To say it is due to the urban-rural divide might be stretching it. Foreign workers have long worked in rural plantations and manufacturing centres, as well as becoming nanny to the current generation of Malaysian adults.

So is it a class issue?

Perhaps poor Malaysians feel they have been robbed from hard labour jobs because of migrant workers? I’m sure we all know a lot of unemployed Malaysians who would just love a chance to become a trolley collector at an airport.

Or maybe many young Malaysians are yearning for jobs as construction workers building studio apartments without proper safety nets.

Or perhaps it has been their lifelong dream to stand on a manufacturing line for eight straight hours, assembling an air conditioning unit.

Or maybe not.

Maybe the animosity towards migrant workers stem from the fact that there are too many of them.

In a news report published in April, undersecretary of the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development Chua Choon Hwa, said the migrant worker population will make up 24.2% of the Malaysian population by 2040.

In fact, so much is talked about a Bangsa Malaysia that the economics of the future labour force seem to be left out.

Has there been a single session on statelessness, migrant worker rights and even issues with permanent residency, or is the offering of permanent residency limited only to pious, suit-wearing Indian Muslim clerics like Zakir Naik?

Needless to say, migrant workers are here to stay and toil for salaries on jobs that Malaysians would rather not do. Isn’t it a given that the Malaysian unemployed youth with a degree would rather remain unemployed than take a job of a migrant worker?

One would think so, seeing as how the number of unemployed youths stood at 10.2% in 2015.

Whatever the reason for the animosity, it is time we stop looking at migrant workers as beneath us. Surely by now many would know that they have contributed not only to economic growth, but also the personal growth of children with parents stuck in the “two income per household” trap of today’s society.

Migrant workers didn’t “flood Kuala Lumpur” during Hari Raya, so much as came out to meet friends and perhaps even family during the festive period away from their homes and loved ones. Think about the transient Malaysian population in London, for comparison.

At the same time, the government is not selling out the country by allowing migrants to run shops, especially since those shops are rented out by Malaysians who would rather laze away and collect a passive income while the shopkeeper tends to a very select market.

Migrant worker dependency is a sign of two things – Tun Dr Mahathir was right in calling Malaysians lazy when he didn’t want to offer aid to asylum seekers out of fear of job displacement; and our country needs to “tech up” or be made a nation running on the power of modern-day slavery.

In this day and age, it is time we stop discriminating migrant labour. To paraphrase the musical Hamilton, immigrants get the job done. Plus, look at your own histories and tell me that your families are not linked to a migrant population and I’ll call you a liar.

It is a globalised world, and anyone believing in surviving without some form of migrant labour is most probably stuck under a coconut shell. And even then, we would probably get a migrant worker to harvest that as well. – June 7, 2017.

* Hafidz loves to ruffle feathers and believes in the EA Games tag line of challenging everything. Most times, he represents the Devil’s Advocate on multiple issues.

* 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.