Many have criticised our federal government for turning back the Rohingyas and the Bangladeshis that came a-calling and landed on our Langkawi lsland on their rickety boats in the past two weeks, but little has been said about what impact in our society these refugees and economic illegal migrants have made over the past one to two decades.

Basically put, the refugees would not have had the gall to turn down an offer by the Thai authorities to allow them to land on their territory if they had not been made known by their brethren here that there are many loopholes and lacunas here in this land of milk and honey called Malaysia which they can use to set up base and stay on for good.

We may be lazy or choosy when it comes to jobs here in our own land and wish that others out there would still do the dirty jobs for us failing to realise that it is here that the base is set up for a total take over by these refugees and economic illegal migrants one day.

We seem to be a society that is at war with ourselves, we fight for power between the major races here whilst these refugees and economic illegal migrants go about doing whatever job that they may get their hands on and before we know it, they are in control of some corner of economic activity which was once ours.

We now even have these people begging at traffic junctions whenever the red light comes on and the cars line up. They come knocking at our doors asking for some money putting on a weary, pathetic and haggard look knowing that we Malaysians will fall for their gimmicks and give them a few ringgit. Once they are done, you can see them walking cheerily down to a spot where they gather to count the collection for the day before calling it a day.

This is very disgraceful for us Malaysians. Whilst we may be having our own problems, it is a disgrace for every Malay, Chinese and Indian here who have so many unanswered questions which we seek answers from our government but yet allow these refugees and economic illegals to beg and do menial jobs and eventually taking over from us.  

We are now in a very difficult predicament, we have become a member of the United Nations Security Council and have also become the chair of Asean for this term as such, turning this refugees away will look very unprofessional of us but we have to recognise the fact that decisions that we make today with regard to these people will have a very drastic effect on us in the very near future.

We would want our young to blame us for making such decisions to take in these people and allow them to be here because that would seem to be the best thing to do now. Yes, the world is watching but so is the world watching in horror on how these refugees have turned the whole political landscape of Europe where most of the middle east economic migrants and refugees folk to.

Italy and Greece are not doing too well economically but yet they have to put up with this influx because of the principles that the European Union, which they are a part of, believes in.

Malaysia should instead make Myanmar realise that we are not everybody’s dumping ground. Yes, we took in thousands of Bangladeshis and Burmese when our economy was booming and yes, we have also paid the price for not controlling the influx because we are now seeing the after effects of these decisions on our social fabric today.

Our youths are still despatch and delivery boys whereas these folks have become business owners who control the flow of fresh produce into our wet markets and have also infiltrated the furniture industry.

The Nepalis

They have now conquered the security guard industry where the clientele requires quality and well trained guards something like the famed Gurkha from their country. Some have even opened up small goods stores around areas where their community is situated which help their kin purchase and send materials to their countrymen and family from here.

They have also been recruited into the food and beverage industry where some are already at the supervisory positions. Now with the recent earthquake hitting their homeland, there will be another large wave of Nepali workers looking for work in Malaysia.

The Bangladeshis

This is the group that will pose the biggest threat to the well beings of original Malaysians. They have now even been given royal titles and it is quite common to see them married to local Malay women and start their generation here.

The very crucial aspect to note here is that they will and are already claiming the elusive ‘bumiputra’ rights by marrying Malays, speaking the language and submitting to Malay customs which will eventually mean that they will become constitutional Malays by falling into the definition in Article 160 of the federal constitution.

We are already seeing unemployment being very high amongst the Malay school leavers and university graduates. The federal and state governments cannot be the employers for them forever. Many will not do the dirty jobs which these Bangladeshis will without any objection. Our youths want to be the bosses but to be the bosses one has got to know the know-how from scratch.

Our local youth are not prepared to rough it out like the Bangladeshis. This is a worldwide phenomena, we are even seeing Bangladeshis in Italy doing business. The Rohingyas being their distant and poor cousins will be the labourers of choice for the well-heeled and rooted Bangladeshis here as they move up the ladder in their adopted country, all to the detriment of we local Malaysians.

Out of the three major races in our country, the Malay race will face the brunt of this influx of migrants because religion is a non-issue. But what our Malay brethren will have to face in the future is that their race will become a very diluted one where we will not be able to pick out an original Malay anymore and we may see a revolt by the Malays on their very own leaders for making lousy policies which allowed for these ‘new’ Malays to become rooted here.

What we are now seeing in South Africa, where the South African blacks are attacking blacks from other parts of the African continent who have come to South Africa and made it their home and have begun taking the jobs of the locals, will happen here as well, if we do not have a good immigration policy like Australia and Singapore.

The Burmese

These group is now the second in the list of the most hardest working migrants here. They are every where, food and beverage, poultry distribution and sale, wet market manning and supervision, fisheries, car-wash, computer repairs and the list goes on and on.

They are not Muslims but they may be studying the benefits of becoming one here since there are many benefits which they can lay a claim to and in the long run it benefits the generation that they will start here.

They seem to be working very well with our ethnic Chinese community because there are no religious impediments and they seem to adjust themselves like ‘ducks to water’ when it comes to local Chinese customs and the most important of all the Chinese food and beverage industry.

The low birth rates of our local ethnic Chinese community will mean that business know-how will inadvertently be learnt by these migrants and they will eventually lead in the local hawker food industry.

The Pakistanis

They have been coming for a long time and now they are coming in droves to enter the construction industry as labourers. The next step that they will take is to try bringing in carpets and garments knowing that our local Malay folks just adore carpets from the Middle East or the likes of it. But in most cases these products are actually products brought in from China through Pakistan to be marketed here.

They have also become taxi drivers, body guards, security guards, mechanics and have also joined the food and beverage industry. They being the fairer and better looking ones compared to the darker Bangladeshis will easily attract our local Malay women. What more needs to be said after that, the next generation will and has already started to grow here.

The process will continue until they slowly start taking over. As they are doing that, they too will demand for special bumiputra rights, when that happens, what will our Malay brethren do?

Militant-ism will start to take seed when frustration grows with the policies that the government takes which affects our daily lives and our ability to earn a living without having to compete with the cheap labour that these migrants provide. Those in power will get more powerful because there is always a cheap source of labour which can be tapped when investors come a calling with lower labour cost in mind.

We are already seeing a huge factory population made up of these migrants who are here legally, but what about those who come in via the human trafficking trade and those who are traded by our local law enforcement agencies who are allegedly in cahoots with these ruthless traders?

We have to have a very stringent immigration policy, we have to take in people who are beneficial to our human capital. We are wanting to become developed nation but we seem to be happy being the dumping ground for cheap labour in South-East Asia.

We envy our closest neighbour Singapore which is also a nation of immigrants, but just take a look at their policies. They mean what they say and implement what they decide and the chain of command is not broken along the way by some smart ‘little napoleon’ who is out to make some fast money.

We have to ask ourselves as to what we are doing to put pressure on the Burmese government who are the cause of these human migration because of mass genocide that is taking place within their borders which the rest of the world does not see.

The Burmese are trying to show the world that they are opening up their borders for foreign investment by adapting a form of military-guided democracy where the army’s top brass, who all now don the mask of civilian leaders, call the shots.

Burma is in itself a confluence of different ethnic minorities who have distinct identities which they want to keep. Their history will show the wars that have been fought by them and the kings that ruled from different tribes in the region during that time. They have had strong Indian influence because of trade and kinship. The Rohingyas are descendants of these traders.

If the Burmese government is a wise one, it would naturalise these people and make them citizens of their nation and farm the fields to add to their agricultural produce, but unfortunately religion seems to be the prime deciding factor.

If the Australians can be successful in turning away the boats that come from Indonesia’s human traffickers carrying people from the Middle East, then we can do the same as well. We are not inhumane, we are generally a very generous society. We have been that way all the while, that is the very reason why we have been colonised by all the major colonising powers of the past i.e. the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and the Japanese for a short while.

But we cannot be welcoming everyone who doesn’t have a country which they can call home because we have to think of what will happen to all who have called Malaysia their home for the past millennium.