MANILA: A high-level Malaysian mission is to visit the Philippines next week to seek ways of stopping illegal immigration, the presidential palace said yesterday.

The team is to arrive on March 7 and will meet with Philippine labour officials to discuss "ways of facilitating the repatriation of illegal Filipino migrants in Malaysia".

The visit comes after a Philippine team visited Malaysia to check on its controversial operation to round up, whip and deport hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants.

During that visit the Philippine delegation was able to negotiate a deal allowing deported Filipinos to be given another chance to work in Malaysia, especially those who voluntarily surrendered.

"In this light, we appreciate the Malaysian mission as a reciprocal effort on the part of its government, and as our first concrete effort on the bilateral sphere towards effectively solving illegal migration," Deputy Labor Secretary Manuel Imson was quoted by an official statement as saying.

About a million the illegal workers, mostly from Indonesia, the Philippines, Burma, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, are in Malaysia, according to official estimates.

Some 382,000 took advantage of the amnesty which started in October to depart without penalty but an estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants remain.