FEB 6 — Our government has been busy thinking up incentives to lure back some of the estimated one million Malaysians working abroad — Tax breaks on cars! PR for spouses!  etc. etc.

I should know. I was one of them.

Last year, we moved back to KL from Minneapolis in the midwestern USA. We came back for the usual reason. My parents were getting older, and the guilt of keeping their only grandchildren half a world away had grown heavier over the years. Still, the decision was gut-wrenching, especially for my American husband, since moving close to my family necessarily meant moving far away from his.

For years, the idea of returning was simply untenable. Those were the days when foreign spouses weren’t allowed to work. (Who’s bright idea was THAT?) I’d seen too many of them consigned to the home not by choice, their university degrees gathering dust, or forced to work informally.

When the government finally changed that policy in 2008, we started thinking seriously about moving home. In 2010, I applied for the Returning Expert Programme, aimed at skilled Malaysian professionals working abroad.

A career journalist, I applied under the information and communications technology category. The application process, which entailed four months of sleepless nights, countless Skype calls to check on delays and missing e-mails, followed by a rejection and finally approval on appeal, is a story for another time.

I wasn’t the only one, obviously. Last year, 650 overseas Malaysian professionals were promised perks if they returned, according to the government. That’s double the 313 approved in 2010. (I think the more relevant number is how many actually packed up and came home and we don’t know that.)

What do returnees want? I’ll go through the incentives offered and give you my assessment of how important each was to us, ranked on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being the least important, 5 the most).

1) Permanent residence for spouse and kids. This was probably the key incentive since my husband and kids are American. PR means the ability to live, work and go to school without hassles such as leaving the country every three months to get a visa re-stamped. Without this, coming home would have been out of the question. As a point of comparison, it took me exactly one day to apply for and get a US green card, based on marriage.

Ranking: 5

2) Tax breaks on cars. Returnees are exempted sales tax and excise duties on two cars. For the cars we bought — a Honda and a Mazda — we saved up to 30 per cent off retail.  But the application process to the Ministry of Finance was arduous and stretched for months. The cars, even minus Malaysian taxes, still cost more than they would have in the US and our choices were limited to locally-assembled cars. (In the past, you could bring in imported cars, but no longer.)

Ranking: 2

3) Kids are exempt from the usual quota for Malaysian kids at international schools. This was moot since my kids are American.

Ranking: 1

4)  Tax exemption on all personal effects brought into Malaysia. I don’t know why this is listed as an incentive because it applies to every Malaysian.

Ranking: 1

5) Flat rate income tax of 15 per cent for five years. Unfortunately, this was announced April 12, AFTER I returned, so it does not apply to me.

Ranking: 1

Overall, the biggest plus was PR for my family, for which I continue to be grateful. But I can’t help but think: shouldn’t that “incentive” be enjoyed by ALL Malaysians who marry foreigners?

I remember how the Indonesian woman at the immigration counter next to me was raked over the coals during her interview for PR, her Malaysian husband standing anxiously by. Meanwhile, my husband was greeted with: “Congratulations, sir! Welcome to Malaysia!” by the immigration official, who told us he’d been instructed to expedite all Returning Expert applications.

So incentives are just a start. After that, what returnees want are fulfilling careers, a clean and efficient government, a good public education system, efficient transportation, safe streets and the opportunity to build a decent life for their families.

In short, the same things every Malaysian wants.

Dangling incentives to pull back a handful of those who have left is kind of like launching one or two small lifeboats even as thousands more each year continue to voluntarily jump off a leaky ship and swim off into the horizon.

* Chen May Yee writes about life as a returnee on Onebrainblog.wordpress.com