Do biometrics help in pest control?

The author regret having posted the following paragraphs, and he has extended his sincere apologies here.

Let's look for a moment at the pest problem at our house. Pests - like cocroaches, termites, rats, etc - could annoy us in many ways: a mere sight of them may disgust or even scare us off; they pollute our food and destroy our belongings; they find a suitable corner tao live, and multiply! And so we buy cans of Ridsect, Shieldtox; lay rat traps; and so on to exterminate these pests, or at least control them. However, just like diseases, prevention is better than cure - or as pestexterminatenow.com may suggest,"Be Inhospitable!"

I've just watched the Edisi 7, the 7pm news on NTV7. The headline was on illegal immigrants risking their lives to escape from getting caught by our security forces. Apparently Pasar Selayang employs some of those foreign workers captured by NTV7's camera in action, as they scurried across a six-lane highway - in the middle of the night. If I'm not mistaken, an officer reported that there were about a thousand illegal aliens at that location, but the law enforcers have only managed to capture eleven of them.

Next, Dato' Seri Hishamuddin was interviewed on this issue - in a surprisingly small office (which I guess/hope was not his). What I learnt from the interview was that Malaysia would very likely employ biometrics at our borders to recognize all immigrants in the near future (not necessarily be at the end of the year, I heard). This biometric system is currently in operation in the US, Japan and Singapore. Now why am I asking this question: Do biometrics help in pest control? Let's compare the illegal immigrant issue with our pest problems at home - and see how we could possibly resolve the matter effectively. First let me say that I don't mean to devalue the lives of illegal immigrants to the level of common pests. This only serves as an analogy to solve the problem that they're causing in our country.

Like pests in our house (sorry for my analogy), illegal immigrants tend to annoy us in many ways that pests do (as I've listed above). But instead of spraying cans of Ridsect or lay traps, for illegal immigrants, we have our very own civil defense forces to find them, detain them and send them back to their home countries. Alas, despite all the combined effort of different government agencies, there are still many more illegal aliens in our country making ugly headlines of crime and stealing some of our jobs away.

Back to the pest problem, do you think that it's possible to document each and every living creatures moving in and out of our house? Of course not. Afterall, pests are as pests do: they enter our house through the smallest cracks on the wall, tiniest space below the door and holes on the ceiling. In fact, in the context of immigration, we are not talking about tiny cracks or holes: Peninsular Malaysia is blessed with long stretches of East and West coasts, while Sabah and Sarawak share a terribly long border with Indonesia - it's almost impossible to police across all our borderlines and monitor who/what comes into our country. What more to use biometrics to document all immigrants!

So what else can we do to solve this problem? I'd suggest we tighten our housing policies - as pestexterminatenow.com suggests, we must be inhospitable to illegal aliens! Wait, I didn't say we should make all immigrants uncomfortable living in our country - just target those without the documents. But how?

First, let's impose a fine on property owners who allow illegal immigrants to stay in their properties - rental houses, shoplots, or land (and reward those owners who promptly report illegal immigrants on their properties). Only then would private land owners have more incentive to ensure no squatters on their properties since they could be held liable for one. Consequently, illegal aliens are reduced to become squatters on state-owned lands. Of course there are illegal aliens already living in squatter areas on state-owned lands, but at least now we know better where to look for them.

Next, we must disallow any temporary housing areas for foreign workers (like those cargoes, typically seen in construction areas). But then where should all the foreign workers with the documents stay? Well the government could build dormitories for them - of course using funds collected from their employers. This way, we can safely monitor their activities and yes, employers would find it harder to hide their illegal workers away from law enforcers. (Foreign workers may also rent a house. And if we apply my previous suggestion, the owners would very likely make sure only those with a document stay in their properties, otherwise they might get fined). In fact, I believe Singapore is already employing this system.

Whether Malaysia would follow - or perhaps without my knowledge we are already employing these system and regulation - I think it's best if we try to make our country as inhabitable as possible for illegal immigrants. That may sound too harsh, but the reality is that we have pretty much tolerated too much of their nuisance -with robberies, sex offenses, etc. Either we make sure that rats and cockroaches don't breed in our house, or we endure their presence and await a day when they'll grow out of control.