Deputy Home Minister Mohd Azis Jamman said this was to prevent illegal immigrants from taking the country’s laws lightly and deliberately overstaying after their passes expire.

The frequent holding of such legalisation programmes is bad for the country, he said.

For that reason, the Immigration Department is taking stringent measures to weed out illegal immigrants as it wants to send a clear message to illegal immigrants that firm action would be taken against them, he told the Dewan Negara today.

He was replying to Senator Chai Kim Sen who wanted to know if corporal punishment was carried out on employers who hired illegal immigrants, as stated in Section 55B (3) of the Immigration Act 1959/63.

Commenting further, Aziz said the operations against illegal immigrants would continue indefinitely.

He said the ministry was working with the human resources ministry to fine-tune the policy of hiring foreign workers.

“God willing, we will soon announce the new policy, including levy payments and new conditions, especially for companies wishing to hire foreign workers,” he said.

Earlier, replying to Chai’s original question, Azis said the Immigration Department had conducted 40,306 operations against employers hiring illegal immigrants, from 2016 until Oct 31 this year.

This saw 3,973 employers being arrested for various offences under the Immigration Act.

In addition, from Jan 1 until Oct 31 this year, 72 employers had been charged under Section 55B (3) of the Immigration Act 1959/63.