The authorities have again announced that there will be another round of a nationwide purging of illegals in the country. While this may be welcomed by the citizens of this country, on deeper reflection, it raises many more mysterious questions.

When hard-working Malaysian professionals marry a foreign national, it is almost impossible to secure a PR status for their legal spouses. Instead, they suffer the humiliation of renewing their visas endlessly, never mind the fact that these professionals remain patriotic to the country and have not chosen to migrate.

Meanwhile, the illegals keep coming in freely despite past national-level operations to keep them out. They still keep coming in despite a security net at all border and entry points.

Further, while sincere citizens pay their taxes, illegals drain our country's wealth to their countries of origin. Do the authorities not realise the gravity of this economic liability to the nation in the long run? Or is this all part of a grossly misunderstood philosophy of 'Prosper thy neighbour'?

It is reported that some half-a-million illegals are being detained at various centres throughout the country. If you ascribe a very conservative estimate amount of RM20 as cost of providing shelter, food, amenities and security per day per detainee, it works out to a whooping RM3.6 billion per annum. Mind you, this spending comes from us citizens who pay taxes. Such tax money could be put to better use in reconstructing our social capital and economy in our agenda to attain Vision 2020.

The story of foreign labour that is being employed by almost every sector is yet another sad saga. For a country of 29 million with one-third gainfully employed, the percentage of foreign workers in the country is just too huge by any standard. And if each worker takes back RM4,800 per annum, one would shudder to compute the ringgit drain from Malaysia given the unusually large numbers of foreign labour in the country.

But the business sector - from construction, manufacturing, agriculture to eateries and households - will argue that locals will not take up the jobs. To add insult to learned minds, it will be brokered that costs will go up if locals do the jobs.

But we also know that the cost of houses or goods and services have never come down given the increasing dependence on the large numbers of legal and illegal foreign labour these past 20 over years.

So there must only be one way to explain all this mysterious equations. Somewhere, some people are profiteering. And it is at the expense of the national good. Period.

We have talked about this far too many times in the past. It has been debated in Parliament. Much has been written in the media. But the problems continue to keep emerging and worse, it seems to be becoming a permanent feature in the country.

Hopefully our current leadership will have the courage and the will to plug this dangerous practice. The increasing presence of illegals and the over-dependence on foreign labour is also a covert form of corruption in our society.