A Ban on Sending Migrant Workers to Malaysia Won't Fix Anything

The story was all too familiar. Adelina Sau, a 21-year-old domestic worker from East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), was discovered dead in the home of her employer in Penang, Malaysia. She had multiple wounds on her body, a swollen face, and suffered from multiple organ failure at the time of her death, according to autopsy reports. Doctors also found bite marks from a dog, scars, and acid burns on her body.

"The doctors said the maid died of multiple organ failure," Steven Sim, of the opposition the Democratic Action Party (DAP), told AFP. "She was made to sleep in the car porch near a dog which was on a leash… It is a senseless loss of a life."

Her employers—a woman and her two children—are now facing murder charges in Malaysia. In Indonesia, police arrested two others accused of kidnapping her from her village and sending her to Malaysia for work on human trafficking charges.

It was another textbook example of maid abuse to occur in Malaysia—Indonesia's wealthier neighbor and a popular destination for migrant workers. Last year, according to figures compiled by the Indonesian government, 62 migrant workers from NTT died in Malaysia alone—a shocking figure when you realize that the entire province of NTT has a population smaller than Jakarta.

The response in Indonesia was equally textbook. Indonesia and Malaysia have a less than rosy relationship with each other, and any allegations of abuse of Indonesian migrants—let alone death—is sure to touch a nerve.

The Indonesian government is now floating a ban on sending migrant workers to Malaysia—a similar ban against countries in the Middle East is still in effect today. Rusdi Kirana, the Indonesian ambassador to Malaysia, and Hanif Dhakiri, Indonesia’s labor minister, both threw their weight behind the ban.

There aren't adequate measures to prevent the abuse of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia, Rusdi told reporters. The correct response is a moratorium on sending Indonesian maid and laborers until Malaysia is able to improve its legal system, he explained.

“Adelina’s case is a heartbreaking tragedy against humanity,” Rusdi said.

If all of this sounds familiar that's because it is. In 2009, Indonesia issued a moratorium on sending migrant laborers to Malaysia after a stories of abuse and torture made headlines. That moratorium was revoked in 2011 after both countries signed a joint memorandum to draft greater protections for migrants.

Moratoriums are a surefire way to get voters and the press on your side. But do they work? Economic experts and migrant laborer rights organizations don't think so. Here's why:

There's a reason why so many young women from places like NTT leave their homes to work cleaning someone else's house in Malaysia—they have few other options. NTT is the third-poorest province in Indonesia, a place where more than 21 percent of its population lives below the poverty line. That's more than 1 million people living on less than $2 USD a day.

That's what makes Malaysia so attractive. The national Gross Domestic Product per-capita in Malaysia is three times higher than Indonesia. And unlike Hong Kong or the Middle East, it's right next door—an attractive option for migrant workers hoping to be close enough to return home.

Today, there are an estimated 2.7 million Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia. In a given year, more than 88,000 new migrant workers arrive from Indonesia, according to official counts.

Migrant labor is a serious segment of the Indonesian economy. Migrants working in Malaysia sent home $1.7 billion USD in remittances in only eight months last year, according to data compiled by the Indonesian migrant workers' agency. That's a significant chunk of the nearly $10 billion USD in remittances sent back to Indonesia globally in the same year.

Altogether, these remittances are so large that some economists estimate that they total as much as 1 percent of the country's GDP. Any moratorium on sending migrants to Malaysia, especially one that occurs when the Middle East moratorium is still in effect, would have a massive impact on the national economy, explained Kaiser Tanjung, the general secretary of the Association of Indonesian Workers (Apjati). And in places that rely heavily on remittances, places like NTT, the impact would be even worse.

“The moratorium is a shortcut,” Kausar told VICE. “It won’t solve the problem.”

The 2009 moratorium on Malaysia affected about 90,000 laborers and domestic helpers who were looking head abroad for work. The following year, remittances were down to $6 billion USD nationwide. And that doesn't even take into account the impact of putting all those recruitment services out of business as well.

“If we look at our Middle East moratorium, it caused half of those labor supply agencies to go out of business,” Kaisar told VICE. “We’ll see an ever wider impact may if the moratorium on Malaysia gets imposed.”

Sure, but only to a certain extent. While Malaysia will likely see a short-term drop in economic activity once the number of legal workers from Indonesia drops, the illegal informal sector is still big enough to absorb some of this shortfall.

According to some estimates, there are six million undocumented workers in Malaysia. Most of them are from Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Myanmar. This number is so big that for every documented foreign worker in Malaysia, there are two undocumented ones working somewhere else.

And a big percentage of these undocumented workers are Indonesian. If the avenues for legal migration shut down, plenty will shoulder even more risk and try their luck with an illegal route.

“The informal sector in Malaysia definitely needs many Indonesian workers,” Enny Sri Hartati, the director of Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef), told VICE. “But Malaysia can still look for replacements from other neighboring countries such as Bangladesh or the Philippines. Here, it’s Indonesia that’s at loss.”

Indonesia's own unemployment rate would likely rise as the country sees a new population of poorer residents without work and little chance of employment back home, Enny explained.

“The economical loss due to high unemployment rates can’t be measured yet,” she told VICE. “These are mostly social consequences, which are equally important to gauge."

Meanwhile, the Middle East moratorium has done little to actually change the situation on the ground over there, she added. The Indonesian government needs a legal framework on the protection of its migrant workers.

“The state has never protected its workers,” Enny told VICE. “There’s a concern that what happened to Adelina will keep happening because there hasn’t been any meaningful change.”

Not really. The economic losses are inevitable, but for Wahyu Susilo, the director of the NGO Migrant Care, the social impacts may prove to be too much to bear. And when people are facing a plate of shrinking options—basically stay poor at home or head abroad regardless of the risk—they tend to choose the option that pays best.

When the 2009 moratorium went into effect, an estimated 11,000 Indonesians illegally traveled to Malaysia for work. Many risked their lives aboard battered boats or in the care of people smugglers working with shady maid agencies in Malaysia.

“This strategy needs to be calculated carefully,” Wahyu told VICE. “If it’s really necessary, then it shouldn’t last too long or it will trigger human trafficking.”

The government can’t protect undocumented workers because there’s no way to track them, Wahyu said. This makes it hard for the government to respond when cases like Adelina’s occur. In fact, when Adelina entered Malaysia in 2015 she did so illegally.

The real solution is creating more jobs here—especially in NTT—so that these men and women don't need to go abroad to earn a living. But that's hard, especially when a moratorium is so easy and so likely to get positive headlines.