Cindy Shiner, Nunukan Timur Island – Kris Enakobun left behind a life of crime working for a Jakarta gangster eight years ago for a better living in neighboring Malaysia, a journey taken by more than a million other Indonesians. His left arm is a travelogue of green tattoos charting his interests and misadventures: "gadis," a slang word for young virgins; "Ida," a girlfriend; "Swastika- 57R," his former gang, and a message to "love your enemies."
Enakobun, 25, was caught in Malaysia's recent crackdown on illegal foreign workers, deported and now lives just over the border in a three-room house with 20 other people, including three generations of Indonesian migrant workers, on this island off the northeast coast of Borneo, which Indonesia and Malaysia share.
"Legal is fine, illegal is fine. I just know I'll get back there soon," said Enakobun, who had worked as a driver and a mechanic.
As many as 10,000 people pass through Nunukan Timur every month on their way to Malaysia, according to one study, and ships arrive here daily with hopeful migrants from more impoverished Indonesian islands such as Sulawesi and Flores. Malaysian President Mahathir Mohamad has called the Indonesians "the new boat people."
A regional economic crisis that began last July has hit Indonesia particularly hard. More than 8 million people, or 10 percent of the work force, have lost their jobs and the currency's value has fallen 70 percent.
Malaysia has been hurt by the Asian financial crisis to a lesser extent and is cracking down hard on illegal migrants. A clash last month at a detention camp left as many as 30 people dead. Malaysia plans to deport tens of thousands of Indonesians by September to help provide jobs for Malaysians and to keep its currency from being sent out of the country by foreign workers. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Thailand has started to send Burmese workers home, and Singapore is planning to deport Indonesians.
But Malaysia's deportations are unlikely to stick. Migration from Indonesia to Malaysia is less a trend than an industry, creating an entrenched subculture of migrants, labor brokers, prostitutes and corrupt immigration authorities who have created a massive cross-border network.
Most of the deportations are carried out from Malaysia's mainland, where illegal immigrants are detained in camps and sent across the Strait of Malacca back to Indonesia. Similar efforts have been underway on Borneo, but sources say that for every 100 Indonesians deported each night to Nunukan Timur, a short speedboat ride away, at least 50 return to Malaysia as soon as the following day. Most of the rest eventually trickle back over the border.
"They will try as hard as they can to get back," said Tajudin Umar, also known as the "King of Nunukan," the local leader for ethnic groups coming from the impoverished southeastern islands of Indonesia. "When they come here, back to the Nunukan port, they just talk with some people here to give them some money and they go back" to Malaysia.
The port is one of the major entry points to Malaysia for migrant workers, particularly from eastern Indonesia, which is the most underdeveloped part of that country. Freelance labor brokers hang around the port to offer their services, but many arrivals already have local contacts – a friend, a relative or someone from their ethnic group. They then go to one of more than a dozen licensed broker companies here, which will arrange their immigration documents for a fee that is generally shared among the broker, government labor workers and immigration officials.
An estimated 90 percent of Indonesians who work in Malaysia do so illegally. The most common form of entry is with a red one-month over-border pass, known as a Pas Lintas-Batas, which costs about $18. Few people, however, leave Malaysia after their pass expires. They work on the palm oil plantations and send some cash home, where prices have skyrocketed and a drought has cut into recent harvests.
The biggest moneymakers are often the brokers who secure work for them and the pimps known as "chicken daddies." They sometimes show up at the two local banks in Nunukan Timur with arm loads of cash to deposit.
Some of the labor broker companies have counterparts in Malaysia, which put in orders for a certain number of workers. The offices here arrange their documents, pay for their transportation and send them on. But once their permits expire they're on their own.
The increasing desperation of Indonesians has helped foster corruption and exploitation. Aida, 21, a farmer's daughter with little more than a sixth-grade education, met a man named Ramli last year who promised her a job as a grocery clerk in Malaysia earning good wages, nearly $100 per month. On her first night across the border, a man came to visit her in her hotel room. "He said, 'I have bought you through Ramli for one million rupiah [$500 at the time] tonight so you are mine,'" Aida said.
Then he raped her. Aida is now back in Nunukan Timur working as a prostitute. She pays about 75 cents a day to rent a little room where she receives an average of three customers a day for about $2 per visit. She is both hopeless and content.
"I'm dirty. Who will marry me? Who will take me as a wife or a girlfriend? I'm not a virgin anymore," she said. "Nobody will want me." Then, she adds, "It's quite good here. I can take care of myself."
Health workers estimate that up to half the women in Nunukan Timur earn their living through prostitution after having been deported from Malaysia or failing to find lasting work there. Three people a day, on average, visit one clinic in Nunukan Timur seeking treatment for gonorrhea. There is no testing available locally for the virus that causes AIDS.
Despite the risks, young men and women still want to come here. Yantri, 18, his brother, Sulaeman, and their three cousins arrived last month from Ende, Flores. The five farm boys have bought over-border passes and are now waiting for their uncle in Malaysia to send them more money so they can show it to immigration authorities at the border as a guarantee that they won't resort to robbery.
Yantri dropped out of school when he was 12, after his father died, to help his mother work on a plantation. Like so many migrants, his dreams are simple but unattainable. "I'd like to be a fisherman or a sailor," he said. "I'm used to the air of the sea." For now, though, he says he will take what he can get as a migrant worker.
Mujhedin Ado can do nothing but watch them. Ado, 59, is among the first generation of Indonesian migrants this century, having worked in Malaysia in the 1950s. In 1963 he fought in Indonesia's war against Malaysia on Borneo.
He says he doesn't understand why the Malaysian government now wants to expel Indonesian workers. "This puzzles me. In the past the Malaysian government was very, very kind to Indonesians," he said. "They allowed us to work and to have good salaries. I don't know why the situation has become so bad."
Despite the risks he knows the young men face, he says he won't try to dissuade them from crossing the border. "I can't say anything because I realize that many people in Flores need good jobs and there are no jobs," he said. "All I can do is bless them."