Easy for illegal immigrants to enter Malaysia: deputy PM

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KUALA LUMPUR, July 22 (AFP): Despite Malaysia's efforts, it is still easy for illegal immigrants to enter the country due to its long coastline, the deputy prime minister said Sunday.
Najib Razak said the government would remain vigilant amid concerns that illegal immigrants have contributed to a rise in the crime rate.
"They (illegals) find it easy to come in as our coastline is too long for us to block them from entering altogether," Najib Razak was quoted saying by state news agency Bernama.
"We step up patrols, but as I said, our borders are very long ... It is not possible to constantly patrol the entire border," he said.
Peninsular Malaysia is flanked by Indonesia and the Philippines and also shares a border with Thailand to the north. On Borneo island, Malaysia's Sabah and Sarawak states neighbour Indonesia's Kalimantan.
Home Affairs Minister Mohamad Radzi Sheikh Ahmad was earlier quoted by Bernama as saying that nearly half of the 49,000 inmates in Malaysian prisons were foreigners.
Radzi said they were held for offences that included murder, rape, robbery and theft.
Najib said the government planned to expand prisons and immigration depots to ease prison overcrowding.
"If they (illegals) did not commit crimes but only violated the Immigration Act, we want to deport them as quickly as possible because it is costly to hold them in detention centres," he said.
Malaysia is one of the largest importers of foreign labour in Asia. Foreign workers, both legal and illegal, number around 2.6 million of its 10.5 million workforce, officials say.
The government periodically launches operations against illegal workers.