The cross-border movement of workers has become well-established in Southeast Asia, with Malaysia a major labour-receiving country and Indonesia and the Philippines the region's main labour-sending states.
Managing cross-border migration (labour, refugee and human trafficking) has become an issue of increasing concern in Malaysia and its international relations.
[2][3] Key institutions have adopted the new terms: the UN General Assembly (1975), the International Labour Organization (2004), the European Parliament (2009), and the Associated Press (2013)[2] and other US news agencies.
Malaysia's first generations of migrants were indigenous peoples, the Orang Asli, believed to have been part of the first wave of migration from Africa about 50,000 years ago or more-recent Asian evolution.
[12] During the second-century Langkasuka kingdoms, the eighth-century Srivijaya empire and the 15th-century Malacca Sultanate, the centre of power shifted between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula.
[15] However, since the early 1970s it has allowed Muslims involved in a conflict in their own country (especially the Moro people of the southern Philippines) to seek refuge in Malaysia.
Sabah's long-standing issues with illegal immigration are starting to irk local communities, who live fearing for their safety and culture.
If left unattended, Sabah will be susceptible to a lot of social ills — illegal drug dealing and consumption, theft and robbery and a "pump boat culture".
Former National Registration Director Mohd Nasir Sugip said that he was part of a secret operation, Ops Durian Buruk (Operation Rotten Durian),[36] during the early 1990s in which the Election Commission of Malaysia and former Deputy Home Minister Megat Junid Megat Ayub instructed his department to issue national identity cards to foreigners to change Sabah's voting demographics.
[42] The Christian Dayak people are stateless, without birth certificates, while the newly-arrived illegal immigrants can obtain Malaysian identity cards in a short time.
[44] In 2008, the Sabah deputy chief minister said that some illegal immigrants attempted to become Malaysian security-force members with fake identity cards.
[49]In addition to Sabah, the border in the Straits of Malacca between Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra enabled Indonesian immigrants to illegally enter the country; in 2014, an overloaded migrant boat sank.
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.
[51] 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.
[52] 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.
[58][59] Malaysia is an 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.
The 6P is shorthand for six Malay words beginning with p: pendaftaran (registration), pemutihan (legalisation), pengampunan (amnesty), pemantauan (supervision), penguatkuasaan (enforcement) and pengusiran (deportation).
[74] Illegal immigrants were given three weeks to accept the offer or face legal penalties if found without a valid travel document or work permit.
[78] In early 2017, a former employee of the Malaysian Registration Department (JPN) was sentenced to 156 years in prison for giving illegal citizenship to Filipino immigrants in Sabah.
[82] Malaysia received two Bay-class patrol boats from Australia in 2015, and said that the vessels would be used to protect their maritime borders from illegal migration across the Straits of Malacca.
[83] Before a November 2016 meeting between Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in Putrajaya, both leaders agreed to deport illegal Filipino migrants and refugees in Sabah back to the Philippines and signed agreements to improve the social conditions of legal Filipino migrants and expatriates in the state with a school, hospital, and consulate.