Saifuddin ‘conflated’ data on foreigners in country, says rights advocate
Saifuddin ‘conflated’ data on foreigners in country, says rights advocate
PETALING JAYA: A human rights advocate has accused home minister Saifuddin of conflating the number of migrant workers in Malaysia with the number of permanent residents when trying to justify the proposed abolition of automatic citizenship for children of permanent residents.
Eric Paulsen said Saifuddin should “come clean” on the number of permanent residents in the country and provide a breakdown by ethnicity and nationality.
On Sunday, Paulsen had said the real victims of the proposed citizenship amendments are Malaysians with permanent resident status, including the Orang Asli and Orang Asal, and not foreigners, as previously claimed.
He also accused Saifuddin of making an “obviously untrue” statement earlier this year that the proposed abolition was based on data showing the presence of 3.5 million foreigners in Malaysia.
In a statement today, Paulsen pointed out that the statistics department had, in July, revealed that there were 3.4 million foreigners residing in the country, which includes migrant workers.
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“Therefore, the minister has conflated the number of foreigners in the country to mean Malaysian permanent residents,” he said.
As Saifuddin’s “outrageous claim” to justify the proposed amendments has been debunked, he said, there is no rationale for the government to remove the right of children of permanent residents born in the country to acquire citizenship by operation of law.
Paulsen, a co-founder of the Lawyers for Liberty organisation, also said Saifuddin’s earlier claim had implied that ineligible children of foreigners were abusing the automatic citizenship right of children of permanent residents born in the country.
However, he said, Saifuddin should know that Malaysia’s citizenship law does not provide for citizenship via “jus soli” (a rule of law that a child’s citizenship is determined by his or her place of birth).
“Therefore, children of foreigners born in the country cannot claim Malaysian citizenship as they could only inherit the citizenship of their foreign parents,” he said.
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He said if the citizenship by operation of law is removed and children of permanent residents born in the country can only apply for citizenship, as proposed, it would not be enforceable in court.
“Therefore, citizenship by registration applications can only be decided at the discretion of the minister, and the courts will not be able to intervene.
“This would be catastrophic as it has been well documented that citizenship applications with the national registration department can take many years, even decades, to process, often only to receive a rejection without any explanation and no further recourse,” he said.
He said most applicants will not have the support or resources to fight long administrative battles with the department, while also struggling with the daily challenges their stateless status presents.
Among the provisions of the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2024 tabled for first reading in the Dewan Rakyat on March 25 is one that seeks to grant citizenship to overseas-born children of Malaysian women.
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In July, Saifuddin said there were still some matters that needed to be refined, despite receiving positive feedback from the Conference of Rulers.
Saifuddin ‘conflated’ data on foreigners in country, says rights advocate
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