Home minister pledges to clear backlog of 14,000 citizenship cases by December

KUALA LUMPUR, March 27 — Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail today said he will clear off a backlog of 14,000 pending applications for Malaysian citizenship by the end of this year.

In his speech while tabling a Bill at the Dewan Rakyat this evening, Saifuddin Nasution — who became Malaysia’s home minister in early December 2022 and clocked in at his office for the first time on December 6, 2022 — said he had to date decided on 3,000 citizenship applications by Malaysian mothers’ overseas-born children.

“Starting from the first day I entered office until today, I have considered decisions on 3,000 applications under Article 15(2) which is for children born overseas,” he said. In this speech, the minister however did not elaborate on how many of these citizenship applications were approved or rejected.

“I have the commitment to resolve all outstanding applications under Article 15A — abandoned children, adopted children, illegitimate children — that are left on my table, which is 14,000.

“The commitment I give to MPs in this Dewan, MPs can hold me accountable to this commitment on December 31, 2024. Before that date arrives, all these outstanding 14,000 cases, we will make a decision,” he said.

Later, when concluding his speech at the Dewan Rakyat, the home minister said: “I repeat the government’s commitment today that the issue of citizenship has to be handled carefully. Cases of applications that are old legacies that have caused applicants to be forced to wait long, that era should pass. We should solve it bravely and responsibly.”

Currently, based on the government’s interpretation and application of existing citizenship provisions (which expressly mention having a Malaysian “father” as a condition) in the Federal Constitution, Malaysian fathers’ overseas-born children are entitled to automatic Malaysian citizenship.

On the other hand, Malaysian mothers’ overseas-born children are currently not able to have automatic Malaysian citizenship, but instead have to apply under the Federal Constitution’s Article 15(2) for citizenship by registration and which means that this will be up to the government to decide. Advocacy group Family Frontiers had previously said such Article 15(2) applications could take years to process and there is no guarantee of approval as the government could also reject their children’s applications.

Currently, the Federal Constitution’s Article 15A gives the Malaysian government the power to register any person below the age of 21 as a Malaysian citizen.

(Based on multiple court cases and cases highlighted by civil society, those who apply under Article 15A have been known to wait for years to even be informed if their application had succeeded or had been rejected by the government. There were also cases where applicants were no longer able to reapply under Article 15A after being rejected, as they had turned 21.)

The Bill tabled by Saifuddin Nasution for the second reading today is known as the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2024.

Among other things, the Bill proposes to amend the Federal Constitution to enable Malaysian mothers to pass on their Malaysian citizenship automatically to their overseas-born children, just as Malaysian fathers already can. The Bill proposes to do this by replacing the words “whose father” with the words “of whose parents one at least” in Sections 1(b) and 1(c) of Part II of the Second Schedule in the Federal Constitution.

Civil society has however highlighted that the Bill’s non-retroactive nature would mean that this proposed amendment would only benefit Malaysian mothers’ children born in the future overseas after the Bill becomes law, as Malaysian mothers’ existing overseas-born children’s cases would be treated according to existing laws and they would still have to apply to the government to be Malaysians.

As the Bill proposes to reduce the age limit for Article 15A citizenship applications from 21 to 18, the Malaysian Citizenship Rights Alliance (MCRA) on Monday recommended that the government maintain the age limit at 21 instead.

Alternatively, if the government proceeds with the reduced age limit, MCRA had suggested that a grace period can be given before the lower age limit is enforced for Article 15A and other provisions “to ensure that young persons caught in the transition period are not denied their right to citizenship”.

The Bill was not debated or voted on today after it was read for the second time, as the Dewan Rakyat meeting was adjourned.

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.

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.