Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia does not recognize refugees because it fears an onslaught of migrants fleeing poverty, a news report said Friday.

“If we recognize refugees, we could open the floodgates and encourage them to come here just to escape economic hardship in their own country,” Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said, according to the New Straits Times.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Malaysia said Thursday 27,000 refugees have come from military-ruled Myanmar, and 12,000 from Aceh in Indonesia.

Ethnic minorities in Myanmar, also known as Burma, have long faced persecution from the military junta, and many are hiding in jungles, or have attempted to leave the country.

The paper quoted Syed Hamid as saying its reasons for non-recognition were purely “economic, and not political.”

“Not all who say they are refugees are political refugees,” Syed Hamid told the paper. “Some are here for economic reasons and this is a burden to society.”

Malaysia has long attracted migrants, many fleeing poverty, from Southeast and South Asian countries like Indonesia, Myanmar, India, Bangladesh and China. Many of them end up doing menial work spurned by locals on plantations and in the construction industry, and are widely blamed for crime and social problems.

Authorities often launch raids to weed out the estimated 700,000 illegal migrants in Malaysia. Such raids have been condemned by rights groups in the past, claiming authorities were heavy-handed in dealing with foreigners.

Aides to Syed Hamid were not immediately available for comment.

On Thursday, UNHCR’s office in Malaysia urged citizens not to look at all refugees as criminals, as they generally do not commit crime fore fear of being sent home. It also urged Malaysian not to view refugees as migrants, saying they want to return home but sometimes cannot.

Malaysia’s Home Affairs Ministry has said it does not recognize the UNHCR’s powers and that the refugee agency was making it difficult for officials to crack down on illegal immigrants.