Illegal Immigrants in Malaysia - Filipino Illegal Immigrants

Filipino Illegal Immigrants

With the hard life of Muslim Filipinos in the Southern Philippines, including terrorism, lack of governmental support, unemployment, and other internal issues, many feel a desperate necessity to find a better life or safety elsewhere. Sabah in Malaysia, being only an hour away by boat ride from major ports in the southern Philippines, has become a favored destination for Filipino refugees. Malaysia being a Muslim country, and unable to reject the urgent needs of fellow Muslims, has no choice but to allow refugees from the Philippines to enter Sabah. These refugees are granted temporary amnesty while in the country. With an increasing number of Filipino nationals settling in the Sabah region, more and more of their relatives and friends have come to join them. Filipino flea markets, traders, and goods have begun to mushroom all over Sabah to cater to the needs of Filipino expats there, thus making their life more comfortable and acceptable.

Many Filipinos come to both Sabah and West Malaysia to seek work, in most case honestly willing to process a valid work permit for themselves. However, their own government has put official pressure on the Malaysian government to act according to the POEA rules and regulations, thus making most of these Filipinos unable to acquire any work permit, and eventually forcing them to be illegal. Some of these work permit regulations include; that workers be at least 23 years old, with a US$400 minimum monthly salary, dental care to be provided by employer, and expensive POEA processing through Philippine manpower agencies. These issues causes problems for typical Filipinos, who have either no money to pay for the expensive processing, or employers unwilling to pay for the expensive demands. To make matters worse, the Philippines has demanded of Malaysian immigration that all Filipino applications be accompanied by a POEA endorsement/acknowledgement, and to reject all applications without it. This has caused even more Filipinos to be disqualified, thus creating a huge number of illegals on both sides of Malaysia, especially those who are already there. When Filipinos start finding cheaper ways to enter Malaysia to work, more and more Philippine regulation has made this resolve impotent. Those assisting Filipinos to work outside the Philippines, without going through POEA, are considered human traffickers. Passengers departing the Philippines, who are suspected of being illegal workers, are often offloaded while in the airport and their passports confiscated. To save cost, employers and employee would process their POEA documents without any involvement of Philippine manpower agencies, this came to an abrupt end in 2008 when POEA disallow any form of processing without going through Philippine manpower agencies.