Irregular migration galore.

Byline: Prof. Sarwar Md. Saifullah Khaled

As the market for jobseekers at home and abroad through legal channels has shrunk, the migration experts and sector specialists believe the tendency of searching for jobs overseas through irregular channels is increasing gradually day by day.

This partly explains the growing humanitarian crisis that has forced thousands of Bangladeshi migrants to flee by sea, usually with the hope of landing in Malaysia. But the government sources responsible for sending economic migrants abroad believes the enticements on offer from human traffickers plays a greater role in making people choose the far more dangerous illegal channels.

The experts opine that for a variety of reasons, with most countries in the Middle East and Malaysia cutting down on migration from Bangladesh through legal channels, poor people have chosen maritime routes to go Malaysia despite risks. Human traffickers have also forced the jobseekers at home to choose the sea route after trapping them.

Thousands of Bangladeshi and Rohingya belonging to Myanmar's Arakan state have landed ashore in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand since 10 May 2015. Thousands more are believed to be trapped at sea, and the United Nations has warned that time to save them is running out. Indonesia claims that nearly 7,000 of these would-be migrants who were stranded at sea before being saved by Indonesian fishermen are illegal workers from Bangladesh, not Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution from Myanmar's Arakan state.

On 24 May 2015, a mass grave, believed to have contained nearly 100 Rohingya migrants, was found in Padang Besar, Malaysia. Earlier in the same month, authorities in Thailand found some 30-plus graves suspected to be of trafficked migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh in an abandoned jungle camp.

The Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) at Dhaka maintain that some jobseekers are going abroad illegally despite having the financial capability to avail the legal channels. This must mean the legal channels to go abroad and the employment opportunities at home are unable to accommodate them.

That then means poor people try and get to Malaysia and Thailand by sea spending Tk 10,000-12,000 each through brokers.

They end up being kidnapped by human traffickers and some get killed if their family members fail to pay ransom. If they would get the chance for domestic employment or regular migration, they would not choose this unlawful way. The...