Wherever you are in the world, immigration is nearly always a sensitive subject. Even in countries where labour shortages require incomers to make up the numbers in particular sectors, integrating, assimilating or accommodating people who are of different ethnicity, faith or culture can pose challenges. But handled with care, and treated with respect, immigrants can bring all sorts of benefits.
In Malaysia, more than 400,000 people from Bangladesh have come to work since 2022. That’s a significant number in a country with a population of 34 million. Last October, in a meeting with interim Bangladesh leader Muhammad Yunus, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said that his government would ensure the workers received proper housing, and that “transparent procedures” would be followed to ensure they were not mistreated.
In the same time period, it has been estimated that the number of Chinese nationals living in Malaysia has risen from about 80,000 to 200,000. One report stated that enrolment of Chinese students at international schools had more than doubled in the past two years – and I can testify to seeing that increase at my older son’s school just outside of Kuala Lumpur.
In a region where the ethnic Chinese diaspora has historically sometimes been treated with suspicion, and occasionally downright hostility and violence – in the case of race riots in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia – such numbers cannot be ignored. But precisely because of their past experiences of interracial tensions, governments are careful and unabashedly interventionist when it comes to such issues. Chinese nationals now make up nearly 10 per cent of the population in Singapore, for instance, which recently passed a Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill to build on existing legislation and add safeguards against foreign interference.
I contrast this vigilant and prudent approach with the current attitude towards immigration in the US and UK with dismay.
US President Donald Trump has long railed against illegal immigration, famously accusing Mexicans of bringing drugs and crime to America, and has promised the “largest deportation operation in history”. This may include the 350,000 Venezuelans who had Temporary Protected Status in the US, until the Trump administration revoked it a week ago. The reason, according to US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, was that “Venezuela purposely emptied out their prisons, emptied out their mental health facilities and sent them to the United States of America”.
In a letter to American bishops, Pope Francis urged “all men and women of good will” to “not give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters”.
The UK government, however, seems to regard the US as an example to follow in this matter. Its official website boasts “Home Office smashes targets with mass surge in migrant removals” – “nearly 19,000 foreign criminals and people with no right to be in the UK have now been removed since the government took office”, it continues – and the BBC reports that “ministers want to give off a sense of demonstrable toughness, visible muscularity” on the issue.
Immigration rules need to be enforced in any country, of course, but this is an area where aggressive talk can have repercussions.
In the past few days, two videos have appeared on social media of racial rants on trains in the UK. In one, an NHS dentist who was born in the UK was told to “go back to Morocco or Tunisia”. In the other, the daughter of an Indian immigrant to Britain was told: “You’re in cahoots with current immigrants … You’re claiming something or you wouldn’t be here. You would be wherever you’re from.”
Do I now have to fear for the safety of my friends and family of Asian heritage in the UK? Even an MP in UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s own Labour party, Clive Lewis, has said that ministers were “enabling the mainstreaming of racism” by releasing a video of people being deported. I agree with Mr Lewis, because while this may nominally start with groups of people who have broken the law, it doesn’t end there.
In both the US and the UK, this approach begins with a false premise: that all illegal immigrants – being criminals (which they are, having broken a law) – are bad people deserving of no sympathy whatsoever. But I have known many domestic helpers who have been deeply cherished by the families they work for who were, nonetheless, illegally present in the country where they were employed. They were meeting a demand, and more than fulfilling their duties; but the system that should have given them legal status was not fit for purpose.
Similarly, I say a cheery “hello” at least three times a week to a Malaysian couple who run a fruit stall near me. They once worked – illegally – picking vegetables in Australia. But as far as I’m concerned, they are – to use a Trumpism – “very fine people”, and I would trust them with my wallet, phone and house keys.
The second conflation is between illegal immigration and the legal variety. The headline on the BBC article I quoted above does just that: “Ministers want to show toughness on immigration.” By this point, the problem has become all immigrants. And how do you tell if someone is an immigrant in countries with majority Caucasian populations? Easy – if they look like they could have come from somewhere else, chiefly Asia, Africa or South America.
And that’s why the sickeningly brutal way that immigration is being dealt with by governments in the US and UK “enables the mainstreaming of racism”, as Mr Lewis put it.
Yes, again, no country can cope with unconfined immigration. But dehumanising people because of their differences is never the answer. Countries in South-East Asia know that only too well. The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar is the latest and most horrendous manifestation of that ruinous strategy.
This is an issue that can be carried out with generosity and gratitude, and acknowledgement of all the skills and energy that immigrants often bring with them to their new homes. It’s also an issue that countries in the Global North need to get better at handling, given how their populations are going to be dwarfed by those in the Global South by the end of this century. They don’t always get it right, but maybe look to Singapore and look to Malaysia for ways to proceed.
The US and the UK are not just going down a very dark path at the moment – it’s the wrong one, and it could rouse horrors that will be regretted for decades.