Murray Hiebert with S. Jayasankaran in Kuala Lumpur – A late-afternoon telephone call alarmed the retired Malaysian civil servant. In a frightened voice, a woman told him she had just arrived by boat from Indonesia, and was calling from outside his Kuala Lumpur apartment complex. His address was the only one she knew in Malaysia: A maid had given it to her after finding it in the house of a friend the official had visited in Jakarta. She had only the clothes on her back, she said, pleading for a job as his maid.

"I was flabbergasted," the man says. "I did a humanitarian act and gave her some money for food, but I made it clear I wasn't looking for help." The official says he hopes he won't receive any more calls from recently arrived Indonesians.

His wish may be in vain. Malaysian officials worry that mounting economic hardship, unemployment and drought in neighbouring Indonesia could turn a decades-long trickle of illegal immigrants into an uncontrollable flood of job-hunters. Confronting an economic downturn of their own, Malaysians fear that an onslaught of migrants could strain the country's social services, create a surge in crime and heighten social tensions.

The first wave has already started: Between February 9 and March 1, Malaysian police tracked 332 boat landings and detained 3,971 illegal immigrants, according to Yusof Mohamad Said, deputy director of internal security and public order. That's equal to three-quarters of the number of illegal immigrants in all of last year, when police detected 444 landings and arrested 5,432 people. Thousands of others are assumed to have entered the country without being discovered. Indonesians typically account for almost all illegal aliens that arrive in Malaysia by boat.

And more are expected. Inspector-General of Police Rahim Noor says he has reports indicating that another 5,000 Indonesians are waiting for boats at various islands off the coast of Sumatra, across the Strait of Malacca from Peninsular Malaysia. "We expect the problem to get more serious as the economic situation in Indonesia gets worse," Rahim says.

Many of the recent arrivals talk of unemployment and drought back home. Those arrested said "it was better to eat rice in our jails, rather than survive on sweet potatoes or tapioca back in their villages," says Yusof. "They have the impression that there are still a lot of jobs in Malaysia," adds a local journalist who interviewed detained Indonesians. "The timing is bad," warns Abdul Razak Baginda, head of the Malaysian Strategic Research Centre. "If we have to monitor the illegals, catch them, register them and send them back home, this is an increased expense Malaysia can ill-afford." Razak refers to a government decision late last year to slash its budget by 18% in an attempt to tackle the economic crisis.

"The social problems could be tremendous," adds Mak Joon Num, research director at the Malaysian Institute of Maritime Affairs, a think-tank. "Officials fear crime will go up. The illegals could bring a lot of disease. They'll create an underground economy that will be hard to keep track of. We could see competition for jobs between legal Indonesians and illegals."

Indeed, many Malaysians blame illegal aliens for an upsurge in burglaries and other crimes. Yet while crime rose 38% in 1997, compared with 1996, police say these migrants committed only 1.3% of crimes reported last year.

Police officials told the REVIEW that all of the detained refugees are pribumi, or indigenous Indonesians. None are from Indonesia's Chinese minority, whose businessmen control about 70% of the country's corporate wealth. Observers assume that the ethnic Chinese would prefer to go to Singapore, the only Southeast Asian state that has a Chinese majority.

Although recent data on the number of Indonesian illegal immigrants to Singapore were not available, the island state is clearly concerned. Singapore police say they've stepped up sea patrols to stop would-be refugees, and the Ministry of Home Affairs made a point of reiterating in March that punishment for illegal immigrants is imprisonment of up to six months and three strokes of the cane, followed by repatriation.

Most of those who arrive in Malaysia come on one of the many small ferry boats carrying 20-50 passengers that regularly ply the Strait of Malacca. Travelling at night, they usually come ashore in sparsely populated parts of southern and central Peninsular Malaysia. Not all of them make it. Indonesian and Malaysian papers have reported several cases of boats overcrowded with migrant workers sinking.

Meanwhile, marine police have bolstered their patrols along Malaysia's 2,000-kilometre coastline in recent weeks in an attempt to deter new arrivals. Soldiers and police mount frequent night raids on squatter villages looking for undocumented residents. Yusof said that by early March, the country's 10 detention centres held 11,000 illegal immigrants and had room for only 1,000 more.

The government has authorized police to use the Internal Security Act against people caught helping illegals. This allows officials to detain without trial anyone believed to pose a threat to national security. Yusof has called on the public to use the power of citizen's arrest to deter illegal immigrants and proposed that the government introduce caning to make them think twice before coming.

Even prior to the refugee crisis, Malaysia had about 1.2 million legal foreign workers, a hefty number for a country with a population of 21 million. Another 800,000 workers are thought to be in Malaysia illegally. About three-quarters of both groups come from Indonesia.

For Indonesia's part, Payaman Simanjuntak, a senior Manpower Ministry official, says Jakarta is trying to stem the exodus by tightening border security and monitoring agents who recruit workers to go abroad. But that doesn't address the underlying problem: At least 8.5 million Indonesians are unemployed and that number is expected to swell.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad says that Kuala Lumpur will expel those arrested, even though they come from a fellow Asean country. He says that other Asean governments recently "agreed that it is Malaysia's right to repatriate the illegals."

But not all analysts are convinced that harsh measures will stem the flow. "Instead of focusing on negative measures, we need to think with Indonesia, regional countries and the international community about what to do if Indonesia can't handle this crisis," warns Mak of the Institute of Maritime Affairs.