Malaysia Tries to Wall Off Flow of Illegal Immigrants

The poet Robert Frost wrote, “Good fences make good neighbors.” That isn’t proving the case for Malaysia and Thailand.

Thais have been offended by a strand of concrete slabs that Malaysia has snaked through 17 miles of rugged hills and dense jungle along the border in an attempt to keep out illegal immigrants. They consider it a slap at a good neighbor.

The reaction is similar to that in Mexico, where people criticize a steel wall that the United States built along the border to slow the flow of illegal immigrants into Southern California. That fence begins about 340 feet out in the Pacific and runs about 35 miles through San Diego County.

Asian activists for workers’ rights call Malaysia’s 8-foot-tall, 2-foot-thick wall topped with barbed wire a costly overreaction. And it will probably just shift routes for immigrants elsewhere, they say.

“So what about the coast? Are you going to build a wall all along the peninsula? It is ridiculous,” said Irene Fernandez, an activist who last year exposed squalid conditions in Malaysia’s detention camps for illegal immigrants.

The government denied that the inmates were being ill-treated and charged her with defamation. Her trial is going on.

About 1 million workers from Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar are believed to have snuck into Malaysia, drawn by the promise of higher wages in the factories, construction sites and plantations of its booming economy.

A domestic work force of 8.2 million cannot meet the needs of rapid industrialization, so Malaysian companies rely heavily on unskilled foreign labor, both legal and illegal. About 750,000 foreigners are working legally in the country.

“Where there is sugar, there are bound to be ants,” said a Malaysian police officer at Padang Besar, a border town near the Wang Kelian checkpoint.

But many Malaysians blame migrant workers for rising crime and accuse them of brawling and of harassing women. Pressures have built for the government to do something about newcomers, both legal and illegal.

In September, the government cut off one route to acquiring citizenship, announcing that it would cancel the work permits of men who marry Malaysian women. About 2,000 such marriages were reported last year.

Then, on Oct. 18, the government proposed a package of new penalties to discourage illegal immigrants. Foreigners would be deported for a first illegal entry and would be subject to caning if caught returning. Employers could be fined for hiring illegals and face caning and jail for doing it again.

Many illegals come by way of Thailand, walking through its southern jungles to descend into the Malaysian state of Perlis, where most of the wall is located. Others are smuggled in by fishing boats that can land almost anywhere along Malaysia’s lengthy coastline.

Construction of the $22-million wall began two years ago in a rugged area that is difficult to patrol. The rest of the frontier lies along a river and across plains that are more easily guarded.

It is too early to say whether the wall can slow illegal immigration.

Apparently hoping to avoid fueling Thai anger, Malaysian officials will not talk about it. Guards at a border checkpoint ordered an Associated Press photographer to stop taking pictures of the steel doors that seal the Wang Kelian gateway at nightfall.

On the Malaysian side of the border, a paved road winds up into wooded hills. Visitors on motorcycles and cars buzz in from Thailand, greeted by Thai music blaring from the roadside stands of cassette sellers on the Malaysian side of the border.

On the Thai side, beyond a marble platform that says, “Welcome to Thailand,” a dusty, unpaved road disappears into the hills. The sole commerce is a soft-drink seller who accepts only Thai currency.

Asked about the wall, he shrugged.