The Immigration Department will begin a nationwide crackdown from Feb 15 on thousands of employers believed to be harbouring or employing illegal workers.

The operation will be carried out with the help of police and Rela.

Currently there are about 1.8 million approved foreign workers in the country, and the department be-lieves there are at least an equal number of illegal ones.

Immigration director-general Datuk Abdul Rahman Othman said the department was already meeting with employer associations and groups before the deadline to “educate” them on the immigration laws and policies for hiring foreign workers.

“From Jan 5, we have been having dialogues with associations such as the Malaysian Employers’ Federation and the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers,” Abdul Rahman said in an interview yesterday. (more…)

A new report, “Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” by Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, finds that comprehensive immigration reform that includes a legalization program for unauthorized immigrants and enables a future flow of legal workers would result in a large economic benefit—a cumulative $1.5 trillion in added U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years. In stark contrast, a deportation- only policy would result in a loss of $2.6 trillion in GDP over 10 years.

Hinojosa uses a computable general equilibrium model based on the historical experience of the 1986 legalization program, and finds that: (more…)