After all the coaxing and the extensions, the Home Ministry is ready to get tough. It will embark on the biggest ever operation against illegal immigrants in the country from next week.
An estimated 1.3 million illegal immigrants failed to step forward under a special amnesty programme, codenamed 6P (Illegal Immigrant Comprehensive Settlement Programme), and the ministry will be going after them.
Employers harbouring such immigrants will also not be spared.
The programme involved six phases starting off with registration (Aug 1 to 31, 2011), amnesty, supervision, enforcement, deportation and legalisation.
The crackdown will start from the wee hours of Thursday, just hours after the close of the legalisation phase which kicked off on Oct 10.
Ministry secretary-general Tan Sri Mahmood Adam said more than four million personnel, including 2.8 million Rela members, 125,000 policemen and 110,000 army personnel, would be mobilised to track down the illegals.
“The Immigration Department will be the lead agency,” he said.
Immigration director-general Datuk Alias Ahmad said the Civil Defence and Customs departments and local authorities would also be involved, adding that 1,400 Immigration enforcement officers would help out.
“This operation will not be just against the unregistered illegals but also employers who did not register their illegal foreign workers.
“We have given them enough time to register and even extended the legalisation process several times. It is time for them to face the music,” he told The Star.
Alias said that a total of 380,000 illegal immigrants had been legalised under the programme so far.
“Of this, 93,000 were deported to their countries of origin and this was done under the amnesty phase,” he added.
To expedite the legalisation process, the Immigration Department opened eight one-stop centres nationwide that operated round-the-clock to handle the applications.
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