COMMENT Au-yang Su Kon (not her real name) stared gloomily at her newborn baby boy at Sungai Buloh Hospital when we paid her a visit.

Her baby was suffering from spina bifida, a condition that required an urgent operation, but being a single mother and left alone on her own in Malaysia, she did not have the money to pay for the surgery.

She was a friend to another Myanmar lady who was teaching at a school which a friend conducts for migrant children, whose families are on transit to a third country.

With the help of the social media, we managed to raise some money to pay off the hospital debts. Just yesterday afternoon, four years later, I was told that the boy is already four years old and growing healthy and well, thanks to generous donors who helped to pay for his operation.

There are probably a few hundred such cases in the country where foreigners have penetrated into the country through the borders. We have helped the child based on humanitarian grounds - that a child has the right to live, regardless of his official status.

You and I have probably heard so much about the way how illegal foreigners sometimes have to fork out a lot of money to pay their recruiters who told them that they can find a good job in Malaysia. These are traffickers who will bring them across the border, sometimes through thick jungles, or sometimes hidden away in containers. Unfortunately, some of them never made it.

Others thought they were coming here as students, but after paying a huge sum of money to syndicates, they get stranded in Malaysia. Some ‘fly-by-night’ colleges have allegedly applied for student visas for anyone who wants to live in Malaysia so long as they pay the money for it.

The Immigration Department just has to conduct a raid at massage parlours as well as small colleges in places like Kepong and Puchong to see how extensive the problem has become.

When these foreigners arrive in Malaysia, thinking that they are here for a better future, they find themselves as illegals in the country. Some of them are exploited by their employers.

With whatever money they earn, they try to send money back to their families at home, but they face a lot of dangers, especially with corrupt police officers, especially in the Klang Valley.

A Nepali security guard I spoke to said that, despite him having a proper work permit, he avoids walking in the streets for fear of being picked up by the police.

Another Indian restaurant worker in Langkawi said he feels a lot safer on the island, where the police officers are allegedly more honest. “When I commit a traffic offence, for example,” he says, “I go to the police station and pay the summons. No further questions are asked.”

Time for a clean-up

The fact that there are many illegal foreigners in this country is apparently because there are officials at various checkpoints who are willing to compromise their positions.

With syndicates, I am not surprised that there are officials who are working in cahoots with these guys to bring in the illegals across the border.

It is a demand and supply market. If there are people willing to pay lots of money to cross the border to another country, there will always be people willing to do the trafficking job.

These syndicates would have to involve both Malaysians and foreigners to make this happen. In between, there are surely some corrupt officials at the borders who ‘close one eye’ just to allow these illegal foreigners to pass through the borders.

This is why the Malaysian public look forward to former Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency (MACC) deputy commissioner (prevention) Mustafar Ali to carry out a cleaning-up operation in the Immigration Department.

But will Mustafar be able to carry out any clean-up as the new director-general of Immigration? This has yet to be seen.

As his secondment is only temporary, it is obvious that the moment he is effective in arresting the problem, he may be transferred out again. Perhaps, his term of appointment has been made so clear that he is there to warm the pew, instead of rocking the boat.

Therefore, as citizens, we are with Mustafar to see that he carries out the task assigned to him to bring the Immigration Department to greater heights.

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.