TAKE THEM ALL, BUT LEAVE ME MANUEL:

Malaysia U-turn on immigrants ban (Jonathan Kent, 5/26/05, BBC News)

Having persuaded illegal migrants to leave with a threat of fines, jail and whipping, the government now desperately wants them back.

It has even set up centres in Indonesia, where most of the workers came from, to speed their return as legal employees. [...]

It is an embarrassing U-turn from a government that wanted to make political capital from its tough stance on illegal immigration - and a sign of just how badly Malaysia's labour shortage is biting.

Undocumented migrants made up more than a 10th of its workforce and factories, restaurants and construction companies have been hit hard

Nativism is so much fun until you have to do the work you hired them for in the first place.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 26, 2005 7:54 AM