By and large, many upright citizens of Malaysia would eye migrant workers with disdain at best, and with suspicion, fear, and vigilance at worst.

Somehow, this motley assembly of foreigners stand out among us like a sore thumb, forming an underclass apart, necessary, and yet menacing somehow. The immediate instinct of the body politics is to reject them, like a human body would reject an alien cell. Yet, in the final analysis, decision makers have to make this concession that foreign workers are indeed needed, and so they go about the business of how best to live with this massive presence of an alien workforce.

The business of government at least to those who hold the reign of power is to control things and people. So far, government control of foreign workers have been nothing but messy. Many departments and agencies have been roped in, and even silly RELA members have jumped on the wagon, sometimes with disastrous results.