I take offense at the suggestion by some who allege that the workers from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnnam and Nepal and the few others including Indonesia are pendatang . They are not.

They are guest workers. They observe the rule of law in the country. They are also civil in many ways.

I have mixed with them and have also been to most of the countries where they come from including to Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Pakistan and I have also written a novel on the experiences of a Bangladeshi man in Malaysia.

I do hope to be able to produce a documentary on them too. They may not qualify to be described as 'expatriates' because most of them are not holding high office. Yet, there are some of them who do and they work as lecturers at local private universities and as doctors at the public hospitals among others.

As for being pendatang as alleged, they pay more than the average Malaysian to the government's kitty.

Each of these foreign workers pays more than RM2,000 a year for a work permit. So if there are two and a half million of them, the amount can be very staggering at about RM4 billion. The money collected from them is used as government expenditure.

Yet, just a small number of them use our public health service. They prefer to go to the private clinics near their workplace.

How many Malaysians pay income tax amounting to RM2,000 a year?

The word pendatang used by the Melayu refers to those who come from abroad, yet who do not care or wish to assimilate with the Melayu. They insist on having their own way as though they are still in their motherland.

Whereas the foreign workers take great pains to assimilate and in no time are able to speak Melayu well, to be able to communicate with the Melayu. Whereas those who claim to have ancestors who had come to this country many decades ago are still not able to converse in Melayu well.

A pendatang therefore, is one who does not care to assimilate with the majority Melayu population like in the other countries where they form a tiny minority such as in America, Indonesia, Brunei, Siam, Philippines, Myanmar, England, France, and so on, where they continue to be lulled by memories of their ancestral past.

Indonesian Melayu are not pendatang because they are from this region; they are perantau or s audara kita or orang kita and have never been regarded as 'aliens' by the Melayu in Malaysia before.