Restructuring Foreign Worker's Policy in Malaysia

This paper attempts to analyze current regulations regarding foreign workers policy in Malaysia and how Malaysia can learn from the experience of several friendly-foreign workers countries. Malaysia is one of the most rapid growth economies in Asia and she is now facing shortage of labor to fulfill this growth. As far as current regulations and enforcement of foreign workers is concerned, Malaysia needs to reform these regulations, so that foreign workers can be fully integrated in the process of long-term economic transformation towards vision 2020. Empirical experience from friendly-foreign workers countries such as Canada and Sweden has shown that both countries benefited greatly from forming a dynamic policy and regulations governing foreign workers. This paper is based on secondary data from empirical studies of friendly-foreign workers countries and primary data from interviews foreign workers and local authority in Malaysia. The combination of both data will contribute to new inputs for restructuring of foreign workers policy in Malaysia. The result from this study shows that one of the conditions towards vision 2020 will be based on the superior of her labor market policy.