Exhausted and at wit's end, Rosnah (not her real name) was unable to hold back her tears as she related her torrid experiences of the past three months.

After moving week after week from one friend's house to another, the 32-year-old mother of three only gained a respite when her application for temporary housing was approved by a women's shelter in Kuala Lumpur.

"I am under so much stress. If I was alone, I could have coped much better but I have children and we have to squeeze into a small room. I can stay here for another month and a half, but I really don't know what is going to happen next," she said as she wept.

Rosnah is among hundreds of Malaysian women married to foreign workers who have found themselves deprived of a home overnight and are saddled with the sole responsibility for their children after being separated from their foreign-born husbands.

But unlike many of these cases, Rosnah's Pakistani husband had not abandoned her - he was arrested by Malaysian immigration officials after his attempts to renew his work permit ran into difficulties.

Faced with her husband's imminent deportation, Rosnah seems doomed to face the future as a single mother of a young family.