The PAC (Public Accounts Committee) must be commended for strongly pushing the Visa On Arrival (VOA) debate topic in Parliament earlier.

VOA was implemented several years ago to boost tourism. While we commend the Tourism Ministry for working hard to bring more tourists to Malaysia, they are opening the floodgates to ambiguous and doubtful characters, smugglers and undesirable immigrants from unstable regions coming here for ulterior motives. Haven't we heard about terrorists, involved in serious terror campaigns and bomb blasts elsewhere, passing through Malaysia at one time or another? Is Malaysia such an easy half-way house?

If since its implementation some 145,000 foreigners have entered the country using VOA but 52,000 of them have not returned to their own countries, why has this not been quickly detected by the policy proponents? Didn't the genius who came up with this VOA idea and those who participated in the decision-making for its implementation think about the possibility of VOA immigrants refusing to leave the country?

Most overstaying immigrants from India, China and Sri Lanka usually come here for work or for commercial interests. Although sex workers from China have been the most noticeable, most Burmese and Nepalese come here to seek shelter from political upheavals in their countries. Very few Congolese and Nigerians come here for permitted reasons but are here to cheat and con people. It is not that Indians and Sri Lankans have any better record but the majority of Pakistanis must be singled out for several reasons.

Firstly, you can see many thousands of Pakistanis running around every corner of the country selling clothes and carpets. Half of them have ill-gotten identity cards from Sabah and the other half are overstaying illegals. The Malaysian High Commission in Islamabad will tell you about a village in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan where several thousand residents are "Malaysians" holding Malaysian passports and identity cards. They cannot communicate when they come to renew their passports!

Then, you find tens of thousands of them married to locals, not minding whatever shape, age and size they get, in order to permanently stay in this country to work or to do business. You bet, most of them already have wives and children back home. As debated in Parliament last year, since these people look like Shahrukh Khan, our local girls fall head over heals creating serious social complications.

In 2002, a Malay girl had to be rescued from a Pakistani village because police did not dare act in the interior region. She followed her husband back to Pakistan when he was refused stay here by our immigration and Home Ministry. To her horror, she found out that he already had two wives in the village.

The whole family took revenge on her and made her a slave for the amount of money he claimed to have wasted trying to get residence in Malaysia. Recently, it was reported that a Malaysian was trying to get her child back from her Pakistani husband after he took the child to his country. This is just the tip of an iceberg. Shall we wait until a minister's daughter gets hooked to them before the prime minister reacts?

Before our government agreed to take in 100,000 immigrants from Pakistan, they should have checked Pakistani immigration records all over the world and study the serious repercussions and complications they will cause to our society. The decision was forced by our serious trade imbalances with Pakistan, favouring us with about RM3 billion.

Malaysia should not have rushed the Malaysia-Pakistan Closer Economic Partnership Agreement, signed this year by International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz and Pakistan high commissioner Tahir Mahmood Qazi. The problem with Malaysian authorities is that they are so engrossed with their own programmes that they are less bothered by how such arrangements will affect other departments or Malaysians. The VOA is a stark example. The International Trade and Industry Ministry is one thing and the Foreign Ministry is yet another.

Consider the following facts.

Last year, Switzerland was forced to close the visa section of its embassy in Pakistan indefinitely after its attachs were found by the Pakistan Federal Investigating Agency for being involved in a human trafficking racket and criminal networks. Last year too, Iranian officials handed over 47 Pakistani nationals to Pakistan's immigration authorities.

These people attempted to use Iran as a transit point for migration to Europe. Some 530 Pakistani workers, deported by Oman authorities, recently arrived in Karachi. They were smuggled into Muscat by syndicates and were detained in jail for several months prior to their deportation.

In August 2002, Italian police arrested 15 Pakistanis with links to al-Qaeda. They were found aboard a cargo ship belonging to the Nova Spirit Shipping Company. The Passport Circle of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in 2003 arrested alleged human smuggler Nadeem Mehmood Khan of the Omest Travel Agency and 19 other would-be irregular migrants to Greece.

They also arrested an employee of a travel agency in Peshawar for supplying phony passports of several countries, fake visa stickers and other travel documents to al-Qaeda fugitives. In September 2007, Pakistan's embassy in Athens were warned by authorities in Islamabad of some 10,000 illegal immigrants, the largest ever illegal movement to Greece and Italy via Turkey by a criminal network colluding with corrupt officials taking advantage of the recent relaxation in Greek immigration rules.

In September 2007, Hong Kong Enforcement and Litigation assistant director Eric Chan said that Pakistan is one of the top countries whose citizens enter his country through illegal channels. Since 2004, he said, a lot of Pakistanis have sought asylum in Hong Kong by claiming to be victims of torture but almost all of them proved fake.

The US Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates 45,000 Pakistani illegals in the United States. After the 9/11 crackdown, the US deported about 16,500 illegals. Aboard a chartered flight carrying 294 Pakistanis, a syndicate member began distributing forms and offering free legal advice to those whom they thought were qualified to file an appeal against their deportation.

On the March 30, 2000, French Police deported 134 illegal immigrants mostly Pakistanis who arrived in the north of the country by buses and trains. Another group of 97 Pakistanis were arrested on a train bound for Barcelona.

On Sept 8, 2001, South Africa clamped down on illegal Pakistani immigrants. Police found five forged identity documents, nine passports, two refugee permits, a driver's licence and four copies of passports on them. Illegal Pakistani immigrants in South Africa are second on the United Nations High Commission for Refugees list, topped only by Nigerians.

On Nov 21, 2007, Iran's official news agency IRNA reported that a total of 169,729 Pakistanis who were staying illegally in 64 countries have been deported in two years. Pakistan interior minister Aftab Sherpao recently told his parliament that cases against 386 travel agents involved in the illegal business have been registered while 82 had been arrested and 80 produced in the courts.