Warped between the ideal and the reality: Laws and the foreign labour in Malaysia

Foreign labour in Malaysia pose a real dilemma in the country’s continuous quest for economic growth : they are needed to man the growth process and they are loathed for the social problems their presence caused on the locals. The issue of foreign labour thus needs to be tackled wisely and for Malaysia this starts with the formulation of formal immigration and foreign labour laws. This ideal of having a properly institutionalized and regulated foreign labour, however, does not seem to match the rather harsh reality often time prevailing in the current employment of foreign labour in the country. This paper seeks to uncover some of the reasons for the gap through a focus study conducted in Selangor and Johor states. The results revealed that transgressions of prevailing foreign labour laws and regulations happen and happen rather rampantly because most parts of the foreign labour employment processes were subverted by informal agents and informal means.