The ‘pendatangs’ among us

When Donald Trump made public his desire to build a giant wall to keep Mexicans from entering the United States, many Malaysians rightly labelled him a racist. When he made disparaging remarks about Muslims, many rightly called him out for bigotry.

Even on the local front, when terms like "pendatang" or "keling" or the more politically-charged "DAPIg" is used, we often decry the use of such terms as rude.

Yet, somehow in the same political galloping white knight discourse, we often hear similar disparaging remarks against our own migrant population – Indonesians, Vietnamese, and in particular, Bangladeshis.

The latest trigger for this is of course, the announcement that 1.5 million Bangladeshis are coming to work in our country. This news has been met with some valid questions but undeniably, plenty of xenophobia with it.

Strangely Malaysians did not react this adversely to similar, but arguably smaller agreements with Indonesia, which at one point accounted for over 70% of our foreign worker supply, numbering over three million in headcount.

So why Bangladeshis? Probably because they make easy targets. After all, Bangladeshis have been the target of jokes since they started coming here in large numbers in the 90s.

Your classic stereotypical image of a Bangladeshi would likely have come from Malay comics – a simpleton whose command of Malay was limited to asking you which type of petrol you wanted – "lama ka baru, leaded ka unleaded?".

Or as a Shah Rukh Khan-wannabe brown Romeo who would bundle up your daughters and run them off to Dhaka and marry them all in the time it took for you to just turn to water your plants. And in the Chinese media, Bangladeshis, or "Manggalai", a strange combination of a stereotypical Indian/Bangladeshi/Punjabi are often used as the Hong Kong version of Hollywood's blackface comedy, except with bobbing heads.

Even the Bengali language was portrayed as a clumsy one, belying its status both as one of Asia's foremost in literature, used by no less than Rabindranath Tagore himself, or as the sixth most widely used script in the world – more popular than both Korean and Japanese.

Politically, in Malaysia, Bangladeshis have also turned into somewhat of a favourite punching bag of sorts, especially with the accusation that 30,000 Bangladeshis had voted in the last general election.

Of the 30,000 , about 20 or so were "caught" and only one was widely publicised as an "identified identity thief" with a Chinese name only to be discovered later to be an Indian child adopted by Chinese parents.

All this is rather uncalled for. Bangladeshi workers, like all foreign workers, are just economic migrants here to earn a living for their families at home, much like Malaysians in Singapore.

But this has not deterred the usage of such terms as "Banglasia" and the painting of Bangladeshis as being here to steal our jobs and vote for the government, even by senior politicians. Memes and posters and videos with strong racist and provocative content are widely spread online.

While the government did plenty (or little, depending on how you look at it) by itself to earn the distrust of the rakyat when it comes to issues like phantom voters, the same cannot exactly be said about the need for foreign workers here.

Ask any employer that hires them and the answer will ring similar – foreign workers simply work harder and demand less and do jobs the locals do not want to do. Most industries that hire migrants involve heavy, dangerous or dirty menial work that locals simply avoid.

Apart from being unwilling to pay more, the equal reluctance to provide better working conditions, medical benefits and other similar peripheral costs from Malaysian employers themselves, are driving the demand for foreign labour up. This in turn is largely caused by the need to keep prices low – construction, production of food, industrial output.

In other words, it isn't the government or the Bangladeshis (or other migrants) who really are causing the influx of foreigner labourers, it is Malaysians themselves.

But many questions asked are of the right tone and should be answered by the government.

With a slowing economy and many projects put on hold, is there really a need for 1.5 million more workers, with companies cutting back on costs and laying off employees?

What do we do about current unregistered migrant workers here – would it not be more cost effective and solve that problem by legitimising them instead?

What controls are in place to ensure the migrant workers are continually employed and, should they lose their jobs, are the mechanisms for either a new job placement or safe repatriation to their home countries in place to ensure they are not staying on illegally?

Do we have enforcement in place to avoid abuse of power, cheating and scams by unscrupulous third parties out to make a quick ringgit by exploiting the registration of these workers as has happened in the past?

How was the agency contract to bring in these workers awarded and was there any conflict of interest?

These are valid questions that distinguish between the very real and documented problem of exploitation of both migrant workers and the system that is used (or in many cases, abused) in bringing them in,hiring and placing them, and the highly-charged political, emotive issue of foreigners being used as instruments of voter fraud.

Xenophobia and racism has no place in either. – February 16, 2016.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer, organisation or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.