Overview Malaysia has always been a hotspot and the country of choice for many foreign workers looking for a better job and prospect of life. Immigrants from countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines pour in to our country yearly in search of jobs. Malaysia has and still welcomes foreign workers to enter our country to work in certain sectors, provided that they have valid and proper documents. Sadly, many immigrants are coming in illegally and those who fail to obtain a job are resorting to crime to earn a living. Resulting in many problems and discomfort for the society and government. Analysis Recent cases have shown many illegal Bangladeshi are pouring into the country posing mostly as foreign students and sometimes as tourists. (http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2013/11/03/Influx-of-workers-posing-as-students-Thousands-of-Bangladeshis-aided-by-institutions-working-with-hu.aspx) There are approximately 3.1million legal and illegal foreign workers in Malaysia today. (http://www.nst.com.my/latest/2-8-million-legal-illegal-foreign-workers-in-msia-1.317515) Statistics have shown that Malaysia is seeing fewer skilled foreign workers and expatriates, while low-skilled migrant workers flood our shores. Malaysia’s rapid economic growth accompanied with shortages for unskilled workers continue to attract foreign workers from neighbouring countries. The differences in growth differentials and overall educational gaps between the labour forces of Malaysia and its more populous neighbours, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, are the key pull and push factors that fuel the current migration patterns. Foreign workers are without doubt needed in certain industries as there also skilled workers whom are willing to accept jobs that are less desired or require a certain aspect of knowledge lacked by the citizens of Malaysia. Large projects such as the 2nd Penang Bridge is build by many skilled foreign workers from China as they possess the talent required. In other words, foreign workers do help develop our country, but crimes caused by some of these individuals are making frequent headlines in newspaper. Many of which are seen in crimes ranging from petty thief to high stake robberies and even murder. (http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2013/09/04/Raid-leads-to-shocking-secret-Foreigner-found-to-possess-pistol-during-illegal-workers-swoop.aspx)
The recent case above shows foreign workers possessing firearms and using it against authority. Officers were shock as prior to this; they only found machetes and swords on the immigrants. Many of them were found to enter the country illegally and fled the scene when authorities raided the place. Luckily, no one was injured during the raid. This is only 1 of the many cases of occurring daily in our country and by the looks of it, is getting worse as time passes. In our case, we partially agree and disagree to stop recruiting workers from foreign countries.

Disagree
Reason to continue recruiting foreign workers The first reason to support recruitment of foreign workers is because they were normally diligent and complete the work faster as compare to the local citizen. Based on this fact, foreign workers that came from country like Philippines, Myanmar, India, Indonesia and some other poor country to Malaysia are seeking for higher income and better living for either themselves or their family, and therefore, they will be motivated in order to get sufficient disposable income and sent back to their family at homeland. Nowadays, a lot of restaurant, security service and construction works are getting more and more familiar in hiring foreign workers as they fully understand this fact that foreign workers have. Other than that, foreign workers that came from developed country such as Japan were also considered as one of the most effective and efficient workers that would like to be hired by many profit organization in our country. This is because since this kind of culture has brought into our country, it has gradually and positively influenced local citizen in many ways. Cost is the main factor for running a business, and also is the main reason they are hiring foreign workers when government sets up a system whereby we can hire cheaper foreign immigrants on a quota system. Besides that, a company can save a lot in production cost as he can replace most of his local staff with foreigners who earn a salary RM300 less compared to local staff. For profit organization, the objective is to maximize the profit responsibility and thus the recruitment of foreigners is useful and helpful when there is a recession in economy as companies can replace their local staff with foreigner in order to maintain their profit. This may be a long term solution with an example that one restaurant was hiring a group number of low salary foreign worker and then they are trained and educated. Although it has caused an initial cost to the company to train and educate them, the company can avoid a lot of expenses in the long run as paying a lower salary.

Advantages to continue recruiting foreign workers
Malaysia is developing rapidly and striving towards becoming a developed country by the Year 2020. In the process of doing so, the need to hire foreign workers is inevitable. Consequently, their arrival will have effects on the Malaysian’s economy. Some of the major effects are the transferring of technology, skills and knowledge to our country; fulfill the job that local workers refuses, illegal business activities, and large expenditure of government.
First, highly skilled workers are crucial towards developing Malaysia. The government has engaged the highly skilled educated expatriates in the manufacturing, technology, education and other fields. By doing so, the foreign workers will be transferring their skills and knowledge to the Malaysians. For example, the Japanese transfer their manufacturing technology in automotive industries. As a result, we are now producing our own cars as we have the knowledge and expertise to do so. For example, Proton gets the technology of automobile industry from Mitsubishi and produce Proton Preve using Mitsubishi engine. Economically, Malaysia also managed to monetarily save as Malaysians are trained locally instead of being sent overseas. Apart from that, the foreign workers are willing to fulfill the jobs that are refused by the local workers. As we know, most of the local workers are do not like to work in the agricultural, manufacturer, construction fields because the wage is too low for them. Locals prefer to take employment in a comfortable environment like air conditioned factories and office which are offering white collar jobs. They prefer easier jobs. For example, working long hours on night shift is part and parcel of a number of jobs in construction sectors. Reports from the Labour Department exhibit indicate that many of the locals are not able to do this because they have family and other social obligations to fulfill. Furthermore, the poor image of construction industry such as absence of job security and poor management cause the local workers lack of confidence to handle the jobs. However, all of these empty jobs need to be fulfilled by someone else like foreign workers. All of the excuses given by the local people are not a barrier for the foreign workers. They willing to take up the job and earn some money for their living and their family. According to research, most of the foreign workers are involve in agricultural and construction field. Statistics show the percentage of foreign workers involves in agricultural and construction is 35% and 13% respectively in the year 2010.
Agree
Reason to stop recruiting foreign workers Firstly, the reason that we have to stop recruiting foreign workers is due to the unemployment rate for local citizen had increased. As we know that there are more than 3.5 million foreign workers in Malaysia which consists of both legal and illegal. According to the government statistics, the unemployment rate has increased from 2.7 to 3.1 per cent between August 2012 and August 2013. This fact indicates that most of the profit organization prefers in the recruitment of foreign workers, especially illegal foreign workers compared to local citizen. This might because foreign workers are relatively receiving lower salary compared to local citizen and therefore preferred by most of the profit organization. Local citizens are suffering from this situation as they get no job application and their living will get affected and finally they and their family will hard to survive furthermore. From the viewpoint of social responsibility, I am supporting the disagreement to stop recruiting foreign workers in order to prevent any problems bring into our country. Next, the second reason is the crime rate in Malaysia has become serious and government is trying to fight against it. According to the news, it showed that the presence of a large migrant population in Sabah poses a certain security threat to the state and its people. Other than that, police chief Datuk Hamza Taib also said that Filipinos committed the most crimes among the foreigners, including offences committed towards their own nationals. Because of the urban life, there is a rising costs of living and it will force a sizeable proportion of the immigrant to make crime. Obviously, many foreign workers are poor and thus come here to earn a living. As we know that, many foreigners use their “work” as a cover, but commit crime at night. All of the situations above make a security threat to the Malaysia citizen as we are worrying when we hang out anywhere during night or walk alone on the street due to the rises of crime rate. Anyway, all of these are against the illegal workers rather than legal workers as legal workers have the work permit to work in our country and therefore they get a stable job. On the other side, PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang said “instead of the use of arms and security teams to tackle crime, existing laws should instead take into account aspects of human nature. So in his conclusion, syariah law aims to educate, not to punish”. In addition, our prime minister, Mr Najib also said the nationwide crackdown will include increased roadblocks and patrols in hotspots and around Kuala Lumpur, before gradually expanding to other major cities.
Advantages to stop recruiting foreign workers
The foreign workers bring also some negative effect to our country, Malaysia. Many illegal immigrants do not really come to our country to find a job but instead they come for some make illegal business or trade. From the news we can know that the foreign workers come from Nigeria always be caught that sell the drug in our country, while the Thai workers be find that sell handgun to the people in Malaysia. For example, The Star states a news that show a Thai foreign worker work with a local ex-detainee to supply many type of different weapons to our local gangster and business competitors at a cheap price. So, the supply of weapon will cause our country be more dangerous and also harm the security of our country. People should not solve the problem by their own but in a legal way such as law.
The other disadvantages bring by the illegal workers is large expenditure of government. First, the money that government spends for every year for detained and deports the illegal workers. Government spends about 14 million to detain and deport illegal immigrants or workers since 1996. Today, the number of illegal workers achieve about 2million in our country, the government sure need expense a lot of money to handle this problem nowadays. Then, we can know from the The Sundaily that the authorities’ detained 27,956 illegal immigrants between January to August this year, of which 18,871 were men, said Deputy Home Minister Datuk Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar. So, this is a major disadvantage because our government spends a lot of unnecessary money on these illegal workers. This money can be spends in other more beneficial ways for our residents and also to improve our country.
In conclusion, there are positive and negative effects of foreign workers to Malaysian’s economy. Thus, the government plays an important role on balancing the situation so that the policy of having foreign workers in Malaysia will have maximum benefit to the country.

Ways to overcome the issue of foreign workers
When more and more foreign workers enter into our country, the unemployment rate of low income job will increase as local workers do not want to work. So, Malaysian Government can propose to raise the minimum wage for our local workers. The minimum wage can be raised to RM900 ringgit per month for workers on the Malaysian Peninsula, and RM800 ringgit for those in the states of Sabah and Sarawak (Liz Gooch, 2012). When the wages had increased, the local workers will be more willing to do the lower income job. The productivity of our local workers will also increase. This is because the raise of wages can ease the burden of the lower income group. Some more, this can help to lift up the lower paid workers’ life and help them to meet the rising cost of living (Liz Gooch, 2012). Therefore, the foreign workers will be unwilling to work in Malaysia because there is not much of the job opportunity for them to compete with our local workers.
Besides, we can create a good relationship between countries, which is liaison between Malaysian government and other countries such as Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Thailand. We need to work together with foreign countries to make sure that there is a clear record of the number of legal workers moving around our country and foreign countries. This can reduce the number of illegal workers that come around both countries. For example, Malaysia and Indonesia reached an understanding in August, 1997 on preventive measures to reduce the illegal entry of Indonesians into Malaysia. Indonesia will increase surveillance along its borders in order to stop Indonesians from leaving illegally for Malaysia (Migration News, 1997). In addition, we need to reduce the number of immigrants in Malaysia because Malaysians are overly dependent on the foreign workers. Therefore, local industries and companies should work closely with skill training providers to recruit manpower instead of resorting to recruit foreign workers (BorneoPost Online, 2013). The training programmes can include effective communication skills training, grooming, self-confidence training and others skills that can be used to compete in the challenging working world. These programmes can let our local workers to do their own jobs in Malaysia and we do not need to depend on the foreign workers.
In the other hand, foreign workers are still needed in our country as they are a vital cog in the economy. But foreign workers especially illegal workers have brought many problems to our country, such as crime. To reduce the crime rate that is made by illegal workers, Malaysia government can implement 6P Program, which is to regularize undocumented foreign workers and give the illegal workers a chance to be legal. Besides, foreign workers should be entitled to equal treatment with our local workers. For examples, provident fund contributions, an 8-hour workday, overtime payment and the same number of public holidays, sick leave and vacation leave (K George, 2005). Some more, provision of comfortable accommodations, free medical treatment and remuneration such as bonuses and shift duty allowances must also be paid to foreign workers (K George, 2005). The authorities must also make sure that the foreign workers are not abuse by their employers. Therefore, foreign workers should enjoy the same benefits and protection as the local workers under Malaysia’s Labour laws. They will then have the positive feelings towards our country, and will reduce the chance for them to make crime.
In addition, Malaysian authorities may enforce law on foreign workers without valid permits. All foreigners are required to provide legal identification documents or new I-Kad for their entry into Malaysia. The documents or the card will serve to differentiate the legal and illegal foreigners. The foreigners without any documents in these settlements will be referred to the Immigration Department for further actions. For those who try to go against the law by bringing in illegal workers or entering Malaysia illegally will be punished by law. Under the immigration law, employers can be fined RM10,000 to RM50,000 for each illegal worker hired and those caught forging documents face fines of RM30,000 to RM100,000 (Migration News, 1997). While for the illegal workers who enter and leave Malaysia not via approved routes such as immigration control post, authorized landing place, authorized airports or authorized points of entry, will be fined not exceeding RM10, 000 or imprisonment not exceeding five years or both under Section 5(2) Immigration Regulations 1963 (Portal of Immigration Department of Malaysia, 2012). Other than that, Ops Nyah can also be carried out to send the arrested illegal workers back to their country. Therefore, this can prevent the foreigners cross the border illegally into Malaysia. By reducing the number of illegal workers, the crime rate will also decrease.

Conclusion As a conclusion, foreign workers in Malaysia are increasing in number as time passes. Foreign workers are basically sub-divided into 2 groups which are the legal and illegal workers. Legal workers consisting of skilled and unskilled workers are needed in certain sector of industries in Malaysia. None the less, foreign workers whom are here illegally or unable to find job are resorting to crime to earn a living. Fright and terror are brought to the citizens of Malaysia with no end in sight. The government holds the responsibility to ensure this treat is abolished from Malaysia and keep the country safe. Finally, after weighting the variables, we can come to an agreement where foreign workers are bringing more bad then good to our country and should be dealt with immediately.

Student’s Own Opinion Based on our own opinions, after developing a questionnaire form and receiving answers, we sincerely felt that Malaysia could do without foreign workers entering our country illegally and causing havoc. After doing all the research above, foreign workers are seen to be harming Malaysia in terms of safety, economic and political. We feel that stopping foreign workers will have an impact on our country in the initial stage. But in the long run, Malaysia will prosper as a more develop, safe and powerful country known by all.