Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Déjà vu

The hardship in their own country has force this people to leave their homeland in search for a better world. They were promised by some people that this place is filled with "gold" and there is a lot of opportunity to get this "gold" and be rich. This people finally reach the place they dream off but the place they imagine is totally different from the reality. It was not a place full with gold and most of them were coned to be low class worker in this foreign land but a lot of them never give up. They do works that the local do not want to do or unable to do. They work really really hard and save as much of money as possible. In the end, those who work hard achieved success and their success stories eventually spreaded to their homeland like wildfire. Those stories had given their own people in their homeland inspiration and motivation to get rich in the land of "gold". Thus, an exodus like of migration has started.

Most of them in the beginning wanted to take the money they earn back to their homeland to enjoy. They don't have the intention to stay in this place of "gold" for long but as the time passes, this people started to have their own family on this land of "gold" and the urge to go back started to fade off. It was then the feeling of love in this foriegn land started to bulid up. Eventhough their feeling still some how more towards their land of origin but it can't be deny that their offspring that born and grow here are totally local in feeling and loyalty.

The gradual increase of the number of this immigrants started to cause problems. The local started to see the huge amount of immigrants as a threat towards thier status and opportunity to work. They wanted to get this people out. If it can't be achieve than they will try to marginalise them. In the same time, the offspring of this immigrants that born and brought up locally started to fight for their rights. They wanted an equal status with the local because they see themselves as local too. Ironically, a balance equality in status between this two are yet to be resolve.

Is the story above familiar? Yes! It is about the early immigrants that came from a lot of places during late 19th and early 20th century.

In the past 20 years, with the rapid industrialisation, our country need a lot of manpower to overcome this need because most of these jobs are consider low class to the local. This immigrants came here also due to our country better environment and opportunity to work compared to heir homeland. But sadly, this immigrants with most of them are Indonesian and Filipino are used as tool by certain party to increase the population of the "bumis" but the locals do not see them as part of them. A lots of social problems had occured since then.

By now, their total number stands at 10% of the total population of the nation. Even some of them and their children had gotten MyKad. What is happening now is really like a déjà vu of the past. Will everything be repeated once again? No one knows.

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