page_title: Demographics of Sabah
section_title: Demographic issues
hierarchical_section_title: Demographics of Sabah / Demographic issues
caption_attribution_description: English: Population comparison of North Borneo (present-day Sabah) from 1960 and 2010 after undergoing massive controversial political demographic change.
context_page_description: The 2015 Malaysian Census reported the population of Sabah at 3,543,500, being the third most populous state in Malaysia and have the highest non-citizens population at 870,400. However, as Malaysia is one of the least densely populated countries in Asia, Sabah is particularly sparsely populated with most of the population concentrated in the coastal areas since towns and urban centres have massively expanded. The statistics in 1970 reported the population of Sabah with only 653,600, with both the state and its neighbour of Sarawak has about the same number of foreign nationals. By 1980, the state population saw a sudden increase to over 1,011,000 following the influx of refugees who fleeing a conflict in the neighbouring southern Philippines. At the same time, Sabah economic booms in the primary sector also attracted large legal workers from both Indonesia and the Philippines. This increase to over 1,863,600 in 1991, 2,603,485 in 2000, and by 2010 turned into 3,117,405. Sabah has 900,000 registered migrant workers working in agriculture, plantation, construction, services and domestic workers.
context_section_description: There are many reports stating that following the influx of refugees and foreigners from the Muslim areas of Mindanao in the Philippines as well from Sulawesi in Indonesia, a "secretive taskforce" was established in the 1970s during Mustapha Harun's term as Chief Minister to register them as citizens. The taskforce then actively engaged from 1988 to 1990 by registering not only the Muslim refugees and migrants but also to Muslims from Peninsular Malaysia to topple the state government under PBS who were majority Christian. A source from one of the former Sabah Chief Ministers estimated the total of illegal immigrants in the state to be around 400,000–500,000 while Sabah's opposition parties together with the Filipino community leaders indicated that the numbers have surpassed one million. The complicated estimate was as a result of frequent "controversial regularisation" with the illegal immigrants and refugees changing their status into "legal citizen". Most of those who have been deported also can return to the state within weeks or a few months. Most of the immigration issues have been perceived by the locals as politically motivated to systematically change the demography of the state; citing a case of a local woman who had been denied citizenship until present. Although the local woman had been living in the state and born to a Sabahan indigenous family, she was still being denied citizenship by the state government, while recently arrived immigrants had acquire their Malaysian identity card in just a short time though the immigrants did not have any relationship with Malaysian citizens:
  I was born at home at Kg Enubai (Tenom) in 1960, so my birth was not registered then. When I turned 12, my mum brought me to the JPN Office to apply for a blue IC. It was a hassling experience as the authorities wanted proof of my local birth. We managed to find the village midwife who delivered me. But I was still given a red IC. I speak Malaysian language, Murut, Dusun, Hakka, Cantonese and Mandarin. I grew up with Murut and Dusun kids. When I talk to people in the Peninsula, they know straightaway that I am from Sabah. Even the police once said to me, 'Aunty, dari Sabahkah?' (Aunty, from Sabah?). But the Indonesian women who live in my area and can only speak Indonesian Malay have got MyKad. Isn't this strange? The Indonesian women said: 'Kami datang lima tahun, sudah dapat IC', (We have been here five years already, we have already got IC).
  Another indigenous woman faced difficulties in sending her child to school when the child was listed as a Muslim without the mother's consent in his recently received birth certificate from the National Registration Department (NRD) which the mother refused to accept the document as the child was born as Christian; with such cases having occurred several times and causing the department to be labelled as practicing religiously-motivated "cleansing" of the state to systematically Islamise its people. This was also added to the exposure of corruption within the Malaysian authorities by an Indonesian investigative television programme in the late 2016, where thousands of Indonesian migrants managed to cross easily through the border in Tawau Division every day, with many of the illegal immigrants also receiving the "Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia" (a type of Malaysian government aid to local low-income Malaysians in the form of money) through the fake identity cards they were using when arriving in the Malaysian territory. Following the seriousness of the issues that have created some ethnic tension among Sabahans as well affecting the security and stability of the state, the federal government agreed to set up a royal commission to investigate the problems. Among the proposals by Sabahan parties during the commission is to re-call all identity cards (ICs) issued in the state and issue new ICs only for eligible Sabahan citizens which will also to ensure the integrity of the Malaysian identity card system. The federal government also been urged to speed up the process of registering all of its indigeno
caption: A comparison of the demographic composition of North Borneo in 1960 and Sabah in 2010.[12][8]
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