Students to be monitored Minister: Foreigners in crime face action

PUTRAJAYA: The movements of foreign students in the country especially those attending short-term courses are being closely monitored to ensure they are not here to commit crimes, the Home Minister said.

The Government was very concerned with the increasing numbers of crime cases such as vice and drug smuggling involving foreign students,Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said.

“If our monitoring shows that they are here not to study or, worse, are involved in criminal activities or causing problems in the community, action will be taken against them,” he said at a press conference after the weekly meeting with state Immigration directors here yesterday.

Hishammuddin added that the universities or colleges might also be hauled up if their students were found to have breached the terms and conditions of their student visas.

“They (the universities and colleges) will have to be responsible and monitor their movements,” he said.

He said there were about 110,000 foreign students in the country, and about 30,000 of them were attending six-month courses, mostly in technical skills.

“It is best for us to be proactive due to the growing cases of transborder crimes involving vice and drug smuggling.

“I think there is a clear movement of drugs from the Golden Triangle in the past, to what we see as the Golden Crescent in the present, using us as the transit point.

“If we link this movement with the grey or black money and in some cases the funding of terrorism mixed up with smuggling of drugs, we will have a volatile cocktail if we don’t do something about it,” he said.

Hishammuddin said the monitoring efforts were jointly conducted by the ministries of home affairs, education, higher education and human resources.

Four months ago, Immigration Department anti-human trafficking unit operations sector chief Abdul Hamid Ahmad said that more than 20 private higher learning institutions had been blacklisted by the Home Ministry after they were found to have misused the foreign student visas

I'm reading: Students to be monitored Minister: Foreigners in crime face action

EntryBest Online

EntryBest Online gathers entries from all around the world through different websites and blogs. We are sorry that we are unable to state all the source of the entries. If you are the owner of the entries and not happy with it, please kindly contact us at jasonblake88@gmail.com. Thank you!