Brendon Beliku is a corporate immigration and employment compliance professional based in Kota Kinabalu. He writes independently on Sabah’s economic governance, labour market policy, regulatory affairs, logistics, transport and KDMR empowerment.
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s native protection frameworks were built on a straightforward premise: indigenous communities, now pushing to be recognised under the unifying term
“Momogun” rather than scattered across Dusunic, Murutic and Paitanic classifications, needed guaranteed access to opportunity the open market would not otherwise provide.
That premise still holds. What it did not anticipate is a labour market where access is no longer the binding constraint.
Advancement is. Into that gap, corporate immigration is quietly filling Sabah’s senior roles while native protection stays focused on the door, not the boardroom.
-The frameworks built to protect-
Native rights in Sabah rest on constitutional footing, not policy preference. Annex A of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 provided for constitutional amendments granting special privileges to natives of Sabah and Sarawak, tailored to local circumstances as a condition of joining the federation, alongside Article 153 and Article 161A of the Federal Constitution.
Even the basic definition of who qualifies remains unsettled: the status of Kadazandusun, Murut and Sungai communities, collectively Momogun, is not clearly defined under the Interpretation, Definition of Native, Ordinance 1952, casting doubt on the validity of the existing definition itself.
That ambiguity is why the push to consolidate under a single Momogun identity has gained traction. Sabah is home to 35 indigenous groups and more than 200 sub ethnic communities speaking over 50 languages, and advocates argue that unifying these communities under one demographic category would enable more accurate policymaking and more targeted allocation of resources.
A clearer identity category, in theory, means clearer protection.
But protection was designed around entry, not what happens after. Quotas, scholarships, and land or business preferences address who gets in, not whether a Momogun professional who reaches mid-career hits a wage or promotion ceiling that native status alone cannot lift past.
-The Disconnect: Protecting Entry, not Advancement-
Corporate immigration is the other half of this story. Malaysia’s Employment Pass framework is undergoing its first major revision since 2016, and the reasoning is candid: authorities cited persistent salary compression between expatriate and senior local roles, along with repeated renewal of Employment Passes in sectors where local talent pipelines have matured but succession outcomes have lagged, as the justification for reform.
Regulators are effectively acknowledging that qualified local professionals exist in these sectors, yet expatriates keep the senior seats anyway.
The new rules require, for the first time, formal succession plans for mid and senior tier Employment Pass holders, with employers expected to show how knowledge and skills will be passed on to Malaysian staff over time, through training programmes, identified local successors, and timelines for transition.
That requirement would not exist if local advancement happened organically.
This is not a uniquely Malaysian pattern.
Fragomen’s 2026 Worldwide Immigration Trends Report shows its global Talent Mobility Index rising from 42 to 44 out of 100 in a single year, with minimum salary thresholds tightened in more than 40 countries, evidence governments everywhere are narrowing the terms under which expatriates can occupy roles domestic talent should fill.
Malaysia is named among jurisdictions the report flags for intensified audit activity, alongside the United Kingdom and Canada.
That localisation pressure rises as global talent scarcity deepens.
The same report finds 74 percent of employers worldwide reported difficulty finding needed talent in 2025, double the rate from a decade ago, and projects a global deficit of 85 million workers by 2030, translating into an estimated USD 8.5 trillion in unrealised annual revenue.
Corporate immigration has become correspondingly expensive. Average relocation cost per employee in 2025 was estimated at USD 77,000, potentially exceeding USD 300,000 for long term assignments, yet 95 percent of employers cannot effectively measure the return on that spending.
Crisis driven relocation requests have roughly doubled, from 65 in 2018 to 2021 to 106 in 2022 to 2025.
Read together, these figures describe a world where every economy is trying to retain its own skilled workers while importing someone else’s, at rising expense and difficulty measuring whether that expense is worth it.
Sabah’s Momogun professionals compete for advancement not against a fixed local system alone, but inside that same global market.
This is the disconnect at the centre of the piece. Native protection frameworks assume the primary obstacle facing Momogun professionals is access, and they are largely right about early career entry.
But by the time capable professionals reach the level where Employment Pass competition happens, those frameworks have nothing left to offer. Pay parity, promotion velocity and boardroom representation are competitiveness questions, not quota questions.
Talent leaves for markets paying for seniority directly, and the vacancy is filled by the same expatriate pipeline the succession rules now exist to manage.
-What this means going forward-
None of this argues against native protection. It argues that entry level protection and leadership level competitiveness are different problems, and Sabah has only built tools for one.
Three shifts would close the gap: (i) extend the new federal succession planning requirement into a Sabah specific tracking mechanism measuring Momogun representation at senior tiers, not just headcount hired; (ii) treat wage compression between expatriate and native professionals as a policy variable in its own right; and (iii) build advancement pathways into leadership, not just entry quotas.
The identity consolidation under Momogun is a meaningful step for data clarity and policy targeting. But clarity only matters if the policies built on it aim at the right altitude. Right now, they aim at the door, while the room they were meant to fill admits someone else.
[Disclaimer]: The views, opinions and analyses expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies or positions of the Jesselton Times, its editors, management or affiliated entities. This article is published for analytical and public discussion purposes and should not be construed as institutional commentary or endorsement.
