[2] The majority of trafficking victims are foreign workers from Indonesia, Nepal, India, Thailand, China, the Philippines, Burma, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam, some of whom subsequently encounter forced labour, debt bondage and wage slavery at the hands of their employers, employment agents, or informal labour recruiters.
A significant number of young women are recruited for work in Malaysian restaurants and hotels, some of whom migrate through the use of “Guest Relations Officer” visas, but subsequently are coerced into Malaysia's commercial sex trade.
Some Malaysian citizens are trafficked internally and abroad to Hong Kong, France, and the United Kingdom for commercial sexual exploitation.
Some Malaysian employers reportedly did not pay their foreign domestic workers three to six months’ wages to recoup recruitment agency charges, making them vulnerable to trafficking.
The country has made little progress to combat the exploitation of foreign migrant workers subjected to forced labour and those recruited under false pretenses and coerced into sex work.
[6] Rohingya refugees, seeking a better life in Malaysia, are frequently victimised by human traffickers who confine, beat and starve them and demand ransoms from their families.
[7] Many Filipinas, promised good jobs in other countries by brokers in the Philippines, have been trafficked to Malaysia and are vulnerable to detention by Malaysian authorities for illegal entry.
[13][14] Malaysia is a cheap labour electrical-parts manufacturing centre, and large companies such as Panasonic and Samsung (as well as the McDonald's fast-food chain) were accused of poor treatment of workers.
Some observers report that corruption plays a role in the trafficking of foreign migrant workers, particularly with regard to officials’ authorising excess recruitment by Malaysian outsourcing companies, despite assurances from officials that practice had been reduced by regulations implemented in July 2009 that require outsourcing companies to demonstrate their need for each worker recruited.
The government treated victims of trafficking as illegal aliens and turned them over to immigration authorities for deportation after they provided evidence to prosecutors.
Aside from a standard 90-day stay in one of its shelters, the government did not provide other legal alternatives to the removal of victims to countries where they may face hardship or retribution.
Some unidentified victims, including children, were routinely processed as illegal migrants and held in prisons or immigration detention centres prior to deportation.
In June 2014 in its annual Trafficking in Persons report, the United States said it had lowered Malaysia's ranking to Tier 3, the lowest grade possible.
Because the assessment that the government had made significant efforts is based in part on its commitments to undertake actions over the coming year - notably greater implementation of Malaysia's anti-trafficking law against labour trafficking - the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2" in 2017.