In a globalised world, are our citizenship laws cruel?

 

A young woman of 19 years came to my office today. She was born to a Malaysian mother and a foreign national father in India.

After that, she was brought to Malaysia and was raised by her mother. She holds only an Indian passport and does not have Malaysian citizenship.

Her mother passed away recently in a tragic accident. I was informed her father became uncontactable thereafter.

Without citizenship, and no parents, she now faces a life of utter uncertainty. She has no access to education, employment, and most importantly, healthcare.

Very unfortunately, this is the situation faced by many others out there.

I am happy that she at least has her aunt who is now looking after her.

Being multilingual, she speaks fluent Mandarin, Tamil, Kannada, English, and Malay. However, with limited to no employment opportunities here without citizenship, these amazing language skills are sure to be wasted.

With a major brain drain in our country, admittedly or otherwise, we must not let any more talent be lost to other countries.

Upon obtaining citizenship, she hopes to pursue technical and vocational education and training (TVET). After speaking to her today, I have no doubt she will do fantastic in all she undertakes and will be an asset to Malaysia.

She submitted an application for citizenship all the way back in 2014. I will assist in liaising with the Home Ministry to follow up on the status of her citizenship application. I hope for a favourable outcome.

This is the harsh reality of the situation on the ground. Policymakers, especially the Home Ministry, must understand and take into consideration such scenarios.

Accelerate approval process

I am happy that Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail has taken a personal interest in cases such as this of children born to Malaysian mothers overseas and hopes to resolve some 14,000 outstanding citizenship applications by the year’s end.

I hope the honourable minister is able to accelerate this approval process and even exceed his aim of 14,000 applications by the end of 2024.

Passage of the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2024 in Parliament will allow citizenship by operation of law to children of Malaysian mothers born overseas. However, there are many other aspects of the said bill that must be looked into.

I have raised this with the home minister on several occasions. I hope the above can be considered and amicably resolved. - Mkini

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M KULA SEGARAN is a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) as well as the Ipoh Barat MP.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.