Filipino Refugees in Sabah: the Federal Govenment Must Not Take the Easy Way Out

Here's the newspaper report (The Star, Tuesday, July 17, 2007) about the Federal Government's alleged plan to give PR (Permanent Residence) status to Filipino refugees in Sabah:

"KOTA KINABALU: Sabah has rejected a federal proposal to issue permanent resident status to thousands of Filipino refugees in the state. Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman said any proposal on a solution to the longstanding refugee problem should involve discussions with the state government. “We should be consulted on such issues,” Musa said amid mounting opposition from Sabah Barisan Nasional parties to a proposal that Filipino refugees be given PR status in a move to resolve the problem, which has been plaguing the state since the 1970s. Musa said he had contacted Minister in Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Abdul Aziz to inform him about the state’s firm stand on the issue. Nazri has been reported as saying that PR status would be given to refugees now holding the IMM13 immigration pass. “We hope that from now on we will be consulted on whatever matters involving illegal immigrants and refugees,” Musa told delegates at the Keningau Umno division meeting Tuesday. On June 26, Nazri, in written reply to a Tuaran MP Datuk Wilfred Madius Tangau, had said that the Federal Government planned to issue PR status to the 10,000 to 15,000 refugees, who had fled the civil war in the Philippines in the late 1960s. However, Nazri’s statement was met with criticism from both ruling Barisan parties as well as the opposition with Musa saying that he was not consulted on the matter"

Well, okay, finally the Federal Government has proposed a plan to solve the refugee problem or possibly the illegal immigrant problem in Sabah. But giving the PR status to those refugees would create the impression that the Federal Government is seeking the easy way out to solve the perennial problem. The proposed solution would be practical if the Federal Government takes into account the following:

• are those holding IMM13 immigration pass are "genuine" refugees and not those who have been brought into Sabah illegally? The Federal Government must establish their identity and investigate whether they were the ones allowed by the Malaysian Government to seek refuge in Malaysia after the civil war erupted in the Southtern Philippines.
• it was alleged that Musa and the State Government had not been consulted? Was this true? And then, how come matter concerning to Sabah's security was conviniently ignored by the Federal Government by not consulting state leaders? The federal and state leaders must sit down and brainstrom to find the most acceptable solutions to the problem. They also must not ignore the sensitivity of the people who have voiced out their dissatisfaction for long.
• the suggestion made by Nazri's counterpart in the PM's Deparment, Bernard Dompok, to a certain extent, is worth considering. The State Government might have to shoulder the potential political, social and economic problems posed by the refugees if there were given the PR status. To ease this burden, Dompok had proposed, that the refugees be distributed to all over Malaysia.
• the Federal Government must introduce a long-term plan to ensure that Sabah is well protected from the influx of illegal immigrants from the Southern Philippines. With the advent of advance technologies such as the GPS and so on, the problem of having to monitor Sabah's large boundaries and its close geographical position to the Southtern Philippines would no longer arise.
• the Federal Government must investigate if these refugees had been used by certain quarters before for political expediency (i.e. to vote during elections) and must ensure that no one would used them again for such a purpose.

Unless the Federal Government explains the rational behind the move to give these refugees PR status with all quarters in Sabah properly consulted, the move would surely be miscontrued as another attempt to absorb non-Sabahans into the official population statistics.