COMMENT On the day of an anticipated major announcement by Prime Minister Najib Razak on the terms of reference for the proposed royal commission of inquiry on illegal immigrants in Sabah, it is pertinent to take stock of the gravity of this menace in the state.

In the past four decades, the population of Sabah has increased by almost five folds (from 650,000 in 1970 to 3.12 million in 2010), much of it consisting of illegal immigrants or their descendants...