#Immigration: In "new" #Malaysia, is there room for another mass citizenship event? Probably, some others have thought this too. The policies I would like to see happen are:
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(i) Let's shut the door; lock down the borders. This isn't too controversial, except among people who depend on a continuous supply of cheap expatriates. For the purpose of this discussion, "expatriate," will refer to all economic classes, skill sets, skin colours, and nations of origin.
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(ii) Let's integrate and _naturalise_ the expatriates remaining on our side of the door. This is more controversial. But I view it as an action that:
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(iii) ... doesn't jar the domestic labour market,
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(iv) ... doesn't incur the cost of many manhunts (remember the Emergency? :p), and
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- (v) ...mirrors the policies which led to the formation of the Federation of Malaya: recognising the contribution of expatriates and diasporic peoples in Malaysia, while forcing them to take a hard stand on their state allegiance.
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That's right, any expatriate worker currently in Malaysia? Let's offer them #citizenship on the same terms that the Chinese and Indians were offered citizenship once upon a time: give up your other citizenships, and join the gang. (v)
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I'm more than willing to listen to #xenophobic yellings about the 'foreignness', of cultures, and the difficulties of assimilating other races into Malaysian culture. This is only to be expected, given that Malaysia itself is *founded* on a explicit assumption of distrust among races, and that the Government of the 1970s-2010s maximised this as a *tool* of governance.
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On the side of optimism, let's bear in mind that the Malayan/Malaysian experiment has not been an epic failure. In fact this year, we are assuming a position of strength. I just hope that we pivot off that position to deal efficiently with the immigration problems that have stared us in the face for decades.
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I propose this stance, for a richer gene pool, a stabler economy, and a deepening of the Malaysian experiment (or experience, however you view it). #teamcelup #gobeige
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END
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Stop reading here unless you have little else to do.
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FOOTNOTES:
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Since #ge14, the hot topics for reform hitting the news have spanned these portfolios:
- finance (fiscal governance)
- education (values, religion)
- law (public prosecution)
- integrity (institutional governance)
- MoHA just came up next, after they reduced crony company rights to handle foreign worker visas
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I'd like to now take a step back and reflect on my interactions with the colleagues I spend most of my time with: expatriate* workers.
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Part of the slant of here will reflect conversations that the United States of America is having about its own border controls - and why not? Our two nations are similar, in having national identities fraught with issues of race, in having a period of submission to the Crown, and heck, we even copied most of their flag.
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My reasons for proposing (i - v): is to stabilise the domestic labour market, push up wages, and reduce inequality. This could be a bit mind-boggling, and I admit it's not clearly reasoned out at this point. (iii)
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If we try to achieve (iii) without (i), it is difficult. I haven't figured out how we can perpetuate an avoidance of (i). So we need (i)
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If we try to target (i) without (ii), then we have to kick expatriates out, and that's a huge act of violence (iv), which has the side-effect of exacerbating (iii). So we need (ii).
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The implementation of (v) needs to come with some caveats of course - perhaps the new citizens will be banned from leaving the country for a period of 10 years, with a looser ban on their movements from years 11 to 20. They may have to pass tests of language and history, for example.
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Here are the concerns that have faced us since the 1970s (I could be mistaken on the exact dates, more data is required):
(1.) loose immigration policies
(2.) porous borders
(3.) volatile labour supply
(4.) middle-income trap
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These struggles are interlinked.
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(1.) "loose immigration policies "
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In trying to achieve economic development both in general, specific tactical policy targets were set, and specific programs were implemented to try and achieve those targets. Without deep analysis on whether the correct tactical targets were chosen given the end-goal, and whether the implementations were efficient or not, let's just say that this resulted in (3.).
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(2.) "porous borders"
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Frankly, I'm quite out of touch with national security implementation, and only have the news to rely on. Perhaps chats with our think-tankers and Malaysians on the ground at border control can give us further insight as to how (1.) may have affected (2.), and how institutionalised weak governance and corruption may have also played a part.
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(3.) volatile labour supply
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We tried to move more Malaysians into higher-paying jobs, and that left a labour supply gap in the tranche of lower-paying jobs. And instead of keeping our labour supply constant, and raising labour prices ("minimum wage"), we turned to external sources of cheap labour.
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Sadly, this has set us on a path of increased wealth inequality. Whenever the minimum wage moves farther from the maximum wage, the structural result is that the maximum wage tends to move away from the median wage also. (This is an intuition about correlations, not causation, which I would like to study in detail in the future. Broadly, it just reflects on politics.) However, this inequality was part of the specific tactical policy targets set out in (1.), with the intention of creating a class of significantly richer people.
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(4.) middle-income trap
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Resulting from (2.) and (3.) however, with a relatively loose supply of labour, we have been unable to raise wages for the median citizen.
