A I S E H M A N . O R G

Well, here is one for you if you think that economic grounds is the only reason for many to migrate.

I will be leaving this country within the next one year.

If you must know, currently I am earning a five figure salary, living in a luxury condo in the heart of KL, own another landed property in Bangsar and have two kids who are three and five respectively. I also have a maid, who for a mere RM400 a month, helps my wife to look after the home and kids.

Yes, I will be migrating to the land of the white-man soon. And guess what, I don’t even have a job to go to yet in this white-man’s land. But you know something? It doesn’t matter to me as I know that with my skills, I can get a job there if I look in the right places.

They do not ask me if I am Muslim or a bumiputera before giving me a job. All they look at is my CV which speaks for itself. And I don’t need to be connected to a ‘Dato’.

I wouldn’t even mind taking up a lower level job as long as I can look after my family and at the same time give my kids the option of a better and fairer future. There is no guarantee that my kids will become doctors or scientists. But merely knowing that they have a fair option is more then enough for my family to decide to take this giant step to uproot.

My lifestyle in this white-man’s land will definitely be different. But just as I had strived for 10 years in Malaysia to create my wealth from nothing at all, what is there to stop me from doing it all over again? In fact with the same effort, I should be much better off.

To put it bluntly, I am prepared to take the risk of emigration at the age of 38 with my family ‘on tow’. The question arises - why should a person in my capacity want to leave when I have all that a person can wish for?

should stop looking with malice at people like me who make a choice to migrate for the betterment of our family’s future. He might want to do a proper study on how much Malaysia stands to lose from skilled people leaving this country simply because they have had enough of it.

Please crawl out of your tempurung and look around at the amount of money that is being wasted in this country to make the well-connected bumiputeras rich. They have nothing to complain about as the government is prepared to give you anything even when in many cases you might not deserve it.

If you want to talk about fairness, then look at the titles that have been given to bumis who had not done much at all. The round-the-world sailor who had to be assisted by the Royal Malaysian Air Force with an expenditure of about a million ringgit and the swimmer whose feat is not accredited by organisations monitoring English Channel crossings.

What about the first Malaysians to make it up Mount Everest, where are their ‘Dato’ titles? Perhaps a title for the medical student who recently crossed the English channel in almost half the time of the former ‘hero’?

I know of bumiputera students in Universiti Malaya. I know them well. You see, I didn’t get the chance to do a proper science course locally and had to struggle to fund my overseas education by begging and borrowing.

You might also want to find out the real reason why the 128 students were not given medical seats in local universities even though they had very high scores. Are you saying that these students are inferior to the matriculation students?

Do you know the pains of studying in order to score excellent results in the STPM? Please, feel free to furnish me facts so that poor souls like me would be convinced that the policies of this country are just and fair.

If you have ever heard of the simple saying, "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach him how to fish and he eats for a lifetime," you will realise that many non-bumis have learned how to fish but the government is still handing out fishes to the bumis. One day the fish will run out.