How they wasted 21 years of my life

EXCLUSIVE I was reading about the problems faced by Perlis mufti Juanda Jaya with the National Registration Department pertaining to his daughter's citizenship status, which has prompted me to write my own experience dealing with JPN and also the Immigration Department.

Honestly, his story doesn’t really surprise me at all. I sympathize with the troubles he has been going through. I had a similar problem – to the point where I just simply have no faith in the current administration.

My story starts way back in 1976, the year I was born. My father was a Malaysian student, studying in Oxford, who married my mother who is English two years earlier in 1974. I am the first of three boys. My father was young, so when I was born he didn’t know that he had to register me at the Malaysian High Commission. Because of this, I do not have a “Borang W”. To those who are unfamiliar of what “Borang W” is – it is the birth certificate for a Malaysian child who was born outside of Malaysia. There was only a British birth certificate for me. Little did my father know the problems he would face in later years.

In 1981, we relocated back to Malaysia. At this point I had a brother, who was born in 1978, and was registered at the Malaysian High Commission. He has a “Borang W”. My brother and I travelled back to Malaysia on our mother’s British passport. At this time my mother was pregnant with her third child, who was born in Ipoh in 1982. He has a Malaysian birth certificate.

Unfortunately, in 1983, my parents divorced, and my mother returned to England. The three of us were in our father’s care, who in turn sent us to live with our late grandmother in Ipoh.

1983 was also the year I started primary school, and this was the beginning of my father’s nightmare. My immigration papers were incomplete. In order to register me for school, he had to get special permission from the Education Department to allow me to go to school. Realizing the problems I will face throughout my educational years, he initiated an application for the “Perakuan Taraf Warganegara” (Certification of Citizenship Status) for both me and my brother. His initial applications were with the Immigration Dept. in Ipoh, because that was where we lived. I remember being taken to the government building quite often, to the Immigration Dept. I was too young to understand the gravity of these visits – so these visits had no real significance to me – at that time at least.

Growing pains

Fast forward a few years, my father remarried, and we were taken to live with him and our step-mother in Terengganu. Our immigration files were transferred to Kuantan. I remember our frequent trips down to Kuantan’s Immigration.

In 1992 we relocated to Johor Baharu, following my father who landed a new job there. At this point my immigration case file was moved to HQ, in Damansara.

So this tug-of-war between my father and the Immigration went on for quite a while up until I was 17 years old just as I was about to sit for my SPM examination in 1993. By this time it has been 10 years since my father’s first application for my “Perakuan Taraf Warganegara”.

Meanwhile at school, kids and insensitive teachers alike used to jokingly call me “pendatang haram” (illegal immigrant) just because I didn’t have an identity card. That, I have to say was the darkest days of my life as a teenager. Luckily I had a very good headmaster, who happened to be my Bahasa Melayu teacher, who kindly assisted me to get special permission from the district Education Department so I could sit for my SPM examination. I passed my SPM exam with Grade 1 results in 1993.

Just like everyone else with good results, I wanted to further my education. My father got me all the forms from UPU, and I spent 2 years trying to get into any university in Malaysia without avail. I kept getting replies from the UPU saying that my application was incomplete due to not having an IC. But how could I? The UPU forms were the ones where you had to blacken the circles corresponding to your IC number – without one – I just simply couldn’t!

During that time I had obtained from the National Registration Department a “Pengesahan Taraf Warganegara Melalui Undang-Undang”. Much to my father’s disappointment, when we presented the Immigration with this – they still refused to grant me the “Perakuan Taraf” (Certification of Status).

Bribe request

At this point I was already 19 years old. I was working for a chemical company in Pasir Gudang, and after 2 years I changed jobs to work for another chemical company as a Lab Technician when finally in 1997 the company I was working for fired me from my job on grounds that it was illegal for them to hire me due to, yes you guessed it, my incomplete immigration status.

At this point my father was at wits end, and because I was jobless, living off my father, I didn’t have the best of relationships with my parents. They kept pressuring me to look for a job, but there was no work to be found. I couldn’t further my studies. So what could a 21-year old do without his identification papers? The immigration kept asking for things that my father didn’t have; for example his marriage certificate to my mother and so on. Things were made so difficult for him.

My father even confessed to me only in the recent years that the Immigration people even asked for money in return for the “Perakuan Taraf”. At that time my father was not earning that much, he had a wife, and five children at this point, and there was no way he could have afforded what these people were demanding from him at the time. My father is a man of principles – I do believe even if he could have afforded it – he wouldn’t have paid those people anyway. Till this day it makes me sick with anger when I think about it.

Disappointment in motherland

So I was in limbo. I made the hardest decision. I grabbed my British birth certificate, and headed for KL. To cut a long story short, I went to the British High Commission and applied for a British Passport. Then I flew back to England.

You would think that things got better for me over there. But it didn’t. I thought that I could go to University over there, but it’s expensive without a study grant. And because I haven’t been in England for so long, I wasn’t eligible for it. I was told that I needed to be in the UK for 3 years before I can be considered.

By the time I was there for 3 years, they abolished all study grants. My mother had her own family to worry about, so I didn’t think it was right for me to bother her for financial help so I can go and study. I just continued working there; jobs were hard to come by, and for someone without paper qualifications, more often they paid just enough to make ends meet. After 5 years trying, I just gave up the idea of furthering my studies. I was miserable; I missed my father and my siblings in Malaysia. I was a wreck. I was all alone and I had no one to guide me.

I used to come back to Malaysia every other year for holiday, to see my family. When in 2002, I met my first wife on-board a flight going to the UK. We married in 2004, and we made the decision to give it another shot with the Immigration basing my application with the fact that my father is Malaysian, and that I married a Malaysian. The Immigration was still up to their usual tricks, asking for things that did not exist, and still insisted that my father should be the one sorting this fiasco out. In the end they gave me just 7 days before I had to “deport” myself out of the country. I was at wits end.

Allah is merciful, that my cousin had a friend whose father was a director of Immigration at that time, who was kind enough to look into my case. I was asked if I really wanted to be a Malaysian citizen (which is pretty much what I have wanted all these years). I was made to swear that I shall never use my British passport ever again and after he deliberated with the Immigration officers, I was finally granted my “Certification of Status”. I was taken to the NRD office across the road (Putrajaya) personally by his officers and was issued with my identification card that very same day.

Wasted youth

My 21 years of waiting was over. I am now a proud Malaysian and I am very grateful. However this is what I am still not happy with our past and present government. This government has wasted a lot of my time. I could have gone to University but I was denied access. I went to the UK only to become a very depressed, angry young man who wanted to do so much with his life, but was denied his rights to do so just because someone and many other people in the administration was on a power trip.

Sometimes I do feel that the government owes me a lot. I am bitter. Sometimes I dream of getting compensation for the grief I have been put through.

Apart from that; I am happy, I have a wonderful wife who loves me, and we are expecting our first child soon. I work for a good company, and I most importantly have my family around me. Although I have 10 years to catch-up to, I am sure that Allah will provide me with the means to support my family. The point I am trying to make is that the Government should pull their socks up and buck up; because these things can affect people’s lives in a very big way.

Unless of course; they are in the habit of screwing people’s lives up.

-Harakahdaily