PETALING JAYA: Former Klang MP Charles Santiago today panned Putrajaya MP Radzi Jidin for "playing to the gallery" in his call for a nationwide crackdown on undocumented migrants involving the military.
Santiago said migrant workers were not responsible for the nation’s illegal immigration problems, which he attributed to "greed, corruption, exploitative recruitment and unscrupulous employers".
"We continue to blame the worker while allowing the people who profit from exploitation to operate with impunity.
"MPs like Radzi need to understand the issues they speak about instead of playing to the gallery. Malaysia has repeatedly faced international scrutiny and embarrassment over its poor labour migration governance.
"We simply cannot deport our way out of a system that we have failed to govern," he said in a series of posts on X.
During the debate on the 2027 budget bill yesterday, Radzi proposed mobilising military personnel to help the immigration department arrest and deport undocumented migrants.
Malaysiakini reported him as saying this would send a clear message to the international community and human trafficking syndicates that Malaysia is serious about tackling the issue.
Radzi also said the country would be "destroyed" if the government failed to effectively stem the entry of illegal immigrants, including by imposing stricter policies on the employment of migrant workers.
However, Santiago said if soldiers are deployed, they should be sent against "recruitment cartels that manufacture debt bondage and corrupt officials who enable labour trafficking".
He claimed that while Malaysian law caps worker recruitment fees at one month's wage, or RM1,700, Bangladeshi workers routinely pay fees ranging from RM20,000 to RM30,000.
"That is 12 to 17 times the legal limit, forcing workers to overstay to recoup their payments.
"If we are serious about reducing irregular migration, we must dismantle the lucrative recruitment-fee system that generates mega profits at the expense of migrant workers and perpetuates the cycle of debt bondage," he said.