KOTA KINABALU: Legalising undocumented migrants for the workforce is a 'stupid' idea, says Datuk Seri M. Saravanan (pic).

       The Human Resource Minister said the best action was actually to deport the undocumented migrants to their original country so that there would be no issues especially involving Malaysia’s labour force.

       "It is a 'stupid' idea to give, when someone comes illegally to your country, you must deport them, not legalise them, if illegals come to your country (and) you legalise them, then that means we will have more and more illegals come to the country.

       "We should not do anything that encourages illegals to come to our country," he told a press conference after launching a national forum entitled 'Human Capital Migration and its Impact on Sabah' here on Thursday (June 16).

       Also present was HRD Corp board of directors chairman Datuk Seri Jamil Salleh.

       Meanwhile, Saravanan voiced his concern over migration especially involving young people from Sabah to other states in search for a better economic opportunity.

       He said in 2020 alone, a sum of 45,900 people from Sabah migrated out of the state.

       "The ministry is committed to working with all parties in Sabah to develop and implement policies that could attract high value investments and create new opportunities for skilled talents and knowledge workers in the state.

       "The ministry will continue to introduce initiatives that can help Sabahans to upskill, reskill, cross-skill and multi-skill through our agency HRD Corp. This will be complemented by programmes implemented by the Social Security Organisation, Skills Development Fund Corporation and TalentCorp," he said.- Bernama