Born in Sabah, but she’s an illegal

ZAMBOANGA, Aug 30 — Rina, 17 years old and heavily pregnant, is waiting for her husband to be deported.

The two were caught in a round-up of illegal immigrants in the city of Sandakan in Sabah in early June.

After spending several weeks in a detention centre, she was put on a ferry to the southern Philippine port of Zamboanga, along with around 100 other Filipinos without papers. It was the first time that she had set foot in the country. Her parents were Muslim Filipinos from the impoverished Sulu islands, who migrated to Sabah in the early 1980s in search of better-paid work.

Both eventually got the coveted identity cards allowing them to stay in Malaysia. But like the children of many second-generation migrants, Rina (not her real name) was born into a shadow world. She never went to school or visited a doctor for fear of being exposed as an “illegal”.

“It was too hard for my parents to get my papers,” she said.

Her 18-year-old husband comes from a village on Jolo, an island in the Sulu chain, but she does not know its name.

So she spends her day listlessly waiting for him to arrive at a government centre for displaced persons in Zamboanga.

“I want to stay in the Philippines and finally have the peace of mind that I never had in all my life in Sabah,” she said.

Most of the Filipinos deported from Sabah are from an autonomous region for Muslims in the south. Its provinces are among the country's poorest.

Philippine government figures show that some 8,000 Filipinos were deported from Sabah in the first seven months of this year. Last year, nearly 12,000 were sent packing.

The numbers are set to rise sharply since Malaysia launched a crackdown earlier this month on illegal immigrants. Most of them are Filipinos and Indonesians working on oil palm plantations or construction sites and factories. Many of those deported will try to return to find work or rejoin their families.

Among them is Amina Hasan, 20.

She and her two-month-old daughter arrived in Zamboanga from Sandakan on Aug 13, along with 127 other deportees. Her husband, a construction worker, is still in Sabah.

“I hope I can secure the documents and finances to return legally, but if not I'll be forced to go back the other way,” she said.

That will probably be her only option. Under the clampdown, Malaysia is now registering deportees using biometric fingerprint readers. Even if she secures valid papers to return to Sabah, she will be denied entry under new regulations.

Most slip back from Sulu's southernmost islands. The night trip, usually in outrigger boats called bancas, costs between 3,000 and 4,000 pesos (RM285), say those that have done it.

Deportees are on at most twice-weekly ferry sailings from Sandakan to Zamboanga. They are met at the dockside by government social workers, put on trucks and taken to the centre for displaced persons in the city's Mampang district.

The clients — as the staff call them — usually stay only for a few days before being given a small allowance to get home. Around 70 per cent of the deportees are male, typically aged between 18 and 35. Everybody there complained earlier this month of poor food or too little of it during their detention in Sabah. But nobody said they had been mistreated.

The centre's director Nadzma Hussein said around 20 per cent of deportees arrive with health problems, mainly respiratory and skin conditions. A few cases of tuberculosis also turn up.

But she said: “The situation is improving and their physical appearance is much better this year; they used to arrive looking very dirty.”

-TMI