The Immigration Department is said to be 'baffled as to how so many Bangladeshis have arrived in the country with valid work permits but without jobs'.

This statement is indeed baffling, because the Immigration Department should know very well that almost all those who are now languishing without jobs at the KLIA ariport and in various shelters organised by NGOs, would have been brought in by outsourcing companies which have the approval to bring in the workers.

It is the Home Affairs Ministry - and the Immigration Department which falls under this ministry - which has given the outsourcing companies the approval to bring in the Bangladeshi workers.

Ishak Mohamed, the director for enforcement in the Immigration Department, talks of 'rogue agents' who bring in the Bangladeshis as if he does not know about the more than 200 licensed outsourcing companies that are in operation. Does he not know that it is public knowledge that applications by these outsourcing companies to bring in hundreds of workers are often approved within 24 hours? On what basis are these approvals given?

He claims to be curious that all those coming in without employers are Bangladeshis, but curiously, he does not seem to know that outsourcing companies are permitted to bring in only Bangladeshis.

NGOs and civil society have also on more than one occasion highlighted to the Immigration Department the numerous problems associated with the Malaysian government's policy on outsourcing involving the Bangladeshis. Ishak also seems to be ignorant of the fact that approvals have been given to outsourcing companies to recruit more than 300,000 Bangladeshis.

His attempt to portray the Immigration Department as the last bastion of defence against 'the Bangladeshis' plan to enter the country with legal permits and then look for jobs' is mischievous because he should know that the Bangladeshis cannot enter the country legally as migrant workers without the prior sanction of the Home Affairs Ministry.

His statement can only been seen as deliberate attempt to mislead the public about the responsibility of the Immigration Department and the legally sanctioned outsourcing companies which have caused untold misery to the thousands of Bangladeshi would-be workers besides putting our country into disrepute.

Perhaps if the Immigration Department's enforcement division prioritised its efforts, it would be able to deal more effectively with national level problems of this nature instead of wasting its resources on petty things like incarcerating the foreign wife who was helping her Malaysian husband to run his food stall. Their spurious allegation was that she was working without a work permit.