Malaysia Illegal Immigrant Amnesty: Govt brings in new program to help workers return home

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Malaysia is introducing a new scheme called "Back for Good" which allows undocumented workers there to return to their home countries without being prosecuted. Malaysia remains heavily reliant on foreign labor in the construction, plantation and manufacturing sectors. Yet many migrants are keen to take the government up on its amnesty offer as Rian Maelzer reports.

If these migrants from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar and elsewhere have got a valid passport and a one-way ticket, and pay a 160 dollar fee, they will be allowed to go home without punishment despite being in Malaysia illegally.

If they'd been caught in one of the many raids, they would have faced lengthy detention then deportation.

Authorities and the public often blame undocumented migrants for social ills such as crime, but they are all too often themselves victims of all kinds of exploitation and abuse.

RATON MOHD. ALIM BANGLADESHI UNDOCUMENTED WORKER "I paid 2000 dollars to the agent but he lied about getting me a work permit. I cannot stay here anymore. It's too difficult. I have to go home."

NURUL KABIR BANGLADESHI UNDOCUMENTED WORKER "I gave money to the agent. He took my passport, never prepared the permit and disappeared. All the time, the police are bothering me, demanding money. Because they opened up this amnesty program, I have to take this chance and go home."

RIAN MAELZER KUALA LUMPUR "Under previous amnesty programs, hundreds of thousands of foreigners who were working here illegally went home, but then later many of them would sneak back into the country."

With immigration authorities now recording biometric data, they expect the "Back for Good" amnesty program to live up to its name. But some are not happy to see the government once again offering undocumented migrants an easy way out.

GAN PING SIEU CENTRE FOR A BETTER TOMORROW "It actually encourages indirectly flouting the laws. It erodes the confidence of the public toward the public authority."

The "Back For Good" program will run till the end of the year, with some 28-thousand foreigners having already taken up the amnesty offer in the first five weeks of the program. Rian Maelzer, CGTN, KL.