Home Minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad has asked for additional 50,000 immigration officers. This request should be approved in view of current serious illegal migrant problems in the country.

Currently Malaysia is holding up to 24,000 foreigners in our prisons, each costing us RM23 per day per person to keep them; these foreigners are mostly undocumented migrants who violated our immigration laws.

For the first eight months, Rela had conducted 3,925 raid operations and arrested 45,502 migrant workers with various immigration offences. In the same period, 14,565 had been deported.

Despite of such raiding activities, there are still another 800,000 who are still at large. They have been hired by the Malaysia employers who had taken every opportunity to employ the illegals despite that the official channel has been greatly simplified.

How can these employers enjoy immunity and are untouchable when it comes to the stringent immigration laws? Even if we talk about the 45,502 arrested, how many employers were charged?

According to Rela chief Zaidon Asumi, an average Rela operation involves 250 Rela members who pick up around 50 migrant workers, with the majority being released.

Only an average of nine foreigners were sent to detention camp for the raids carried out by 250 Rela members. It brought about the questions about the effectiveness of Rela, which claimed more than RM32 million from Home Ministry.

It's timely to question if Rela's operation compliance with the standard operating procedures and if such procedures had been audited by the auditor-general's officers monitor by NGOs?

The next question is to check if it is true that RM200 per head bribes is needed to secure the release of these illegal migrants from the Kuala Lumpur Rela and/or legal department of immigration enforcement unit in Bandar Bukit Damansara?

It is understood that the powerful human traders supported by the recently retired Home Ministry director-general is still holding 300,000 approved quota and had collected more than RM1.3 billion in cash from these Bangladeshi workers.

The director-general of the Immigration Department and its enforcement head remain supportive of the full delivery of the 300,000 workers despite of the ban imposed by the cabinet committee headed by Najib Tun Razak.

Is the immigration director is just a paper tiger with no power? Or is he personally involved in the 300,000 yet to come Bangladeshi workers quota allocation?

The parliamentary Public Account Committee has no jurisdiction to investigate the 300,000 foreign workers quota. The auditor-general had failed to probe deeper into the reasons why the Foreign Workers Panel issued the approval letter before the Immigration Department.

Upon the approval of 50,000 additional immigration officers, the new director-general of Home Ministry will follow this up by approving another 500,000 new quota in this human trade.

With all these abuses of power and corrupted practices with the Foreign Workers Panel and the Immigration Department, even 50,000 new immigration recruits will be insufficient to carry out their duty to purge illegal foreigners from Malaysia.

Perhaps it's timely to get ACA to initiate the investigation on the wealth accumulated by top civil servants and their cronies since 1998.