'CHASED' OUT? More Malaysians leave for greener pastures abroad

KUALA LUMPUR - Almost 8,000 registered voters gave up their Malaysian citizenship over the last two years.

Serdang Member of Parliament Dr Ong Kian Ming, in an opinion piece today commented that most of them were believed to have taken up Singapore citizenship and the overwhelming majority were Chinese Malaysians.

He said statistics obtained from the Election Commission showed 7,828 Malaysians gave up their citizenships but it did not specify which countries they had migrated to.

In comparison, the Returning Expert’s Programme under Talentcorp managed to attract 3,600 Malaysians to return home over the past four years.

“This figure understates the number of Malaysians who have given up their citizenship over the past two years.

“It does not include those who have given up their citizenship but were never registered on the electoral roll.

“It almost certainly excludes those who have given up their Malaysian citizenship and have taken up citizenship in countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the other usual migration destinations for Malaysians.”

Ong said this list of names was almost certainly made up of Malaysians who had given up their citizenship for that of Singapore because of the strictly enforced requirement that Malaysians who took up Singapore citizenship needed to officially give up their Malaysian citizenship within a stipulated time.

“What is saddening is that these are ex-Malaysians who had cared enough about the country but for various reasons decided to give up their Malaysian citizenship for greener pastures across the causeway,” he said.

Ong said that the majority of those who dropped their citizenship to take up Singapore citizenship were from Johor.

“The largest number of ex-Malaysians come from Johor at 36.6%, followed by Perak – 19.5%, Selangor – 9.4%, Kuala Lumpur – 6.7%, Malacca -5.6%, Penang – 5.4% and Negeri Sembilan – 5.3%.

“A majority of them also fall into the 30 to 50-years age group as they make up 80.5%, which means that they are in the most productive years of their working life.”

He also said that 56% who left for Singapore were women compared with men.

However, Ong said that it was hard to determine the exact reason behind the gender differences without any further additional information. - Therakyatpost