Malaysiakini : The differences are stark.
Where the issue is lived, not imagined
In Tawau’s Kukusan, a night ceramah by Parti Harapan Rakyat Sabah leader Liew Yun Fah drew a modest crowd. He had just secured gazetted status for Airport Lama residents and moved on to a topic that is usually treated with caution: the undocumented families living near local communities.
His message was blunt.
“They can do whatever they want. As long as they do not kacau us. If they do not kacau (disturb) us, why should we kacau them?” he said.
His audience nodded along. No protest, no murmurs. Just an agreement.
After the event, one of Liew’s aides, a former journalist, explained it. To those on the East Coast, this is not an explosive issue. It is the West Coast and interior that react strongly.
The reasons are straightforward.
Undocumented migration is part of everyday life in Tawau, Semporna and Lahad Datu. Late birth registrations are common. Borders remain porous. Enforcement is uneven.
Communities have, by necessity, learned to live alongside people whose identities and documents do not always fit neatly into official categories.
Neighbours become colleagues. Colleagues become relatives by marriage. The fear that dominates conversations elsewhere is not present here. Accommodation, not alarm, shapes the ground sentiment.
This is also why videos of “PTI sightings” that go viral in Kota Kinabalu or Tambunan barely move the needle in Tawau. People here have lived with the issue long enough to treat it as part of the landscape.
Where the issue is remembered, not lived
The tone changes almost immediately when entering Tambunan.Here, undocumented migration does not appear in daily interactions. Instead, it resurfaces through long-standing memories and old political narratives.
Stories from the Project IC era remain part of the political identity of the interior.
They are retold, sometimes with new details, but always with the same conclusion: “This could change us.”
Project IC refers to the long-standing allegation that identity cards were systematically issued to non-citizens in Sabah to alter the state’s demographic and electoral balance.
At the morning market, a shopkeeper recounted how he had seen “three 12-seater buses” of “PTI” coming out of a timber camp during the 2018 polls.
Whether the account is accurate or not matters less than how embedded it has become in local political memory.
In Keningau, where many youths have left for jobs in other towns, most of the narrative now comes from older residents. They rely heavily on Facebook reels, WhatsApp forwards and coffeeshop talk.
This creates a loop: old anxieties meeting new digital rumours.
Among the younger working group, the view is noticeably different. For them, undocumented migrants are not a political fear. They are workers.
Many small renovation businesses in Keningau and Tambunan hire them quietly. In close-knit villages, people know who to call when they need to fix a pipe or extend a kitchen. A former schoolmate of mine put it plainly: cutting out the middleman makes the work cheaper and faster.
To the younger locals, the undocumented migrants are part of the local economy.
To the older generation, they are part of a political fear that never fully disappeared.
Two realities, one state election
These opposing experiences, tolerance on the East Coast and anxiety in the interior, explain why undocumented migration remains both a sensitive and unavoidable issue.
The reliance is real.
Plantations, construction sites and even household repairs depend on them. At the same time, the fear is also real, sustained by older political narratives and shared widely on social media.
This duality puts candidates in a complicated position. A line that earns applause in Tawau could be damaging in Tambunan. Parties know this. They adjust their messaging accordingly.
As Sabah approaches polling day on Nov 29, video clips and forwarded messages about undocumented migrants continue to circulate. For now, most are aimed at Warisan, a repeat of what happened during the Kimanis by-election.
But no matter who wins, the next government will inherit the same problem that governments before it have struggled to solve. The issue is too old to disappear overnight and too complicated to treat as a simple political slogan.
Sabah’s migrant question has never been one story.
It is two different realities shaped by geography, memory and circumstance. This election will not settle the debate, but it will show how deeply it still shapes the way Sabahans think about power, identity and the future of their state.
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