Home minister cites 3.5 million foreigners as reason to stop automatic citizenship for permanent residents’ kids, insists won’t make them stateless

KUALA LUMPUR, March 27 — Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail today said children born in Malaysia to permanent residents would not be stateless as a result of the constitutional amendment to remove their right to automatic Malaysian citizenship.

The minister said this is because the permanent resident parents are not Malaysians, and their children who are born in Malaysia would be able to take on their parents’ foreign nationality.

In his speech when tabling a Bill to amend citizenship laws in the Federal Constitution, Saifuddin Nasution explained the government’s proposed amendments, including to change a condition for Malaysia-born children to be entitled to Malaysian citizenship.

Under the Federal Constitution’s Second Schedule’s Part II’s existing Section 1(a), every person born in Malaysia — and who has at least one parent who is a Malaysian or a permanent resident in Malaysia at the time of the person’s birth — is entitled to Malaysian citizenship by operation of law. In other words, such a Malaysia-born person would be entitled to be a Malaysian citizen automatically or because the law says so.

The government’s Bill proposes to amend Section 1(a) to only allow a Malaysia-born person to be entitled to Malaysian citizenship automatically, if the person has at least one Malaysian parent. In other words, under the new amendment, having at least one permanent resident parent would no longer enable such a Malaysia-born person to be entitled to automatic citizenship.

“With this proposed amendment, a child who is born in the Federation and with at least one of the parents — at the time of birth — permanently resident in the Federation will no longer be qualified to acquire citizenship by operation of law,” Saifuddin Nasution told the Dewan Rakyat this evening. The Federation refers to Malaysia.

“Currently, with the influx of an estimated 3.5 million foreigners, this amendment is seen as no longer being able to be delayed,” he said, before going on to say that children born in Malaysia to permanent residents will not become stateless as they will take on their parents’ citizenship. Being stateless means an individual is not a citizen of any country.

“The Home Ministry wishes to explain that individuals who become permanent residents of this country are not Malaysian citizens, they still hold foreign citizenship. In this matter, permanent residents’ children who are born in Malaysia have citizenship following their parents.

“So the issue of children to permanent residents becoming stateless persons does not arise,” he said in his speech.

Following the home minister’s tabling of the Bill for second reading, the Bill was not debated on as the current Dewan Rakyat meeting was concluded by the Dewan Rakyat speaker.

The Dewan Rakyat sitting today was scheduled to end at 5.30pm, but the Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Johari Abdul had exercised his powers to give a 15-minute extension for the home minister to complete the tabling of the Bill.

Also pending for the Dewan Rakyat Speaker to decide on is Pasir Gudang MP Hassan Abdul Karim’s motion for the government’s Bill on the proposed citizenship amendments to be sent to a parliamentary special select committee.

The Dewan Rakyat has three meetings scheduled this year, February 26 to March 27; June 24 to July 18; and October 7 to December 5. The next immediate Dewan Rakyat meeting will have 15 full days scheduled for Bills and other government matters.

While the home minister’s speech today asserted that permanent residents’ locally-born children will not become stateless if they no longer have the right to automatic Malaysian citizenship, civil society groups working with stateless cases had last Sunday and on Monday cautioned that the proposed Section 1(a) amendment risks worsening the statelessness problem for those with genuine ties to Malaysia.

The Malaysian Citizenship Rights Alliance (MCRA) had last Sunday said three categories of Malaysia-born children would be negatively impacted if the government removes the category of “permanent resident” parents from Section 1(a), namely: 1. children born to stateless Orang Asli and Orang Asal parents (who until today only have PR status and have not been recognised as Malaysians); 2. children born to third-generation ethnic Indians and ethnic Chinese in Peninsular Malaysia (who have for generations only been given PR status and are still stateless); and 3. children born to an adopted stateless child (namely a stateless person who was adopted as a child and is now an adult parent but is still stateless and only has PR status).

MCRA had on Monday suggested alternative wordings for Section 1(a) that could help address the government’s concerns while also protecting such children.

Today, MCRA said until the Bill’s second reading is resumed, it hopes to engage with the government and MPs on the concerns it has raised regarding certain provisions in the Bill to find the “best solutions” that will benefit those most vulnerable in Malaysia while also taking into account the government's concerns.

Read here for Malay Mail’s summary of some of the key amendments that the government is proposing via the newly-tabled Bill known as the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2024:

The full government Bill can be found here.