Permanent Residence Status: A red card to Malaysia

Written by Kazi Mahmood
Wednesday, 15 July 2009

At last a support group to handle the task of getting a better deal for foreign spouses in Malaysia. The Foreign Spouses Support Group made headlines with its demand for clarification of the rules to apply and obtain the Permanent Residence (PR) status in Malaysia. World Futures Online supports the group fully.The issuance of PR is one of the most guarded secret of Malaysia. There are a set of rules that are said to apply for the PR status in the country but almost no foreign spouses are given the status. Most applications are rejected or put on hold – in the cold store as I was told by an informant. One way of getting the Red IC is to know someone who knows a junior minister or a top gun in the government. They can sign a note that recommends the PR to such and such persons and this too, if you are lucky, you may be granted the PR. There is no certainty there altogether as the entire mechanism is one of a cat and mouse dance.

This does not happen to the non-Muslims alone as it happens to hundreds of Muslim foreign spouses, both male or female, who decides to stay on in Malaysia, which I did. Now I know many Malaysians reading this piece will shout back at me saying that I am living here I must accept the consequences or I am here and I am being 'kurang ajar' by asking too much. The point however is that since I am here, I have a local wife and a son born in this country, I am automatically half citizen of the nation.

I have the right to question why the PR application procedures takes ages and why the rules keep changing upon the whims and fancies of the officers in charge. It is the rightful thing to do, to write about and to make others read altogether.However, it is not the battle for 'foreign spouses' alone as it also engages the sense of truthfulness of the Malaysian nation as a whole.

The question the foreign spouses always ask when they are cornered and not given any facilities to handle their families in the country is why are the Malaysians hypocritical? The PR status is a matter of concern to all in this country. If my son was to write about the hassle that a foreigner goes through in this country, he would use the four letter words towards the BN regime and the officials and he is Malaysian pure sang!

In my case, I applied for the PR status or 'Permit Masuk' in the year 2000. Now there has been 3 Prime Ministers in this country since then. In the time of Tun Mahathir, the old fox could not be bothered with the foreign spouses. He had more important things to do than look into the matters of concern to the Malaysian citizens who are married to foreigners. In his time, money was more important than anything else hence why bother about a bunch of foreign spouses?

In the time of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the entire thing was about the 'lembik' and the 'lembut' stories and the officers at the Kementerian Dalam Negeri (KDN) or Home Ministry could not be bothered about the PR applications. The PR was a hot item given to a few high profile people to raise the level of rich foreigner's/investors confidence' in Malaysia.

I was even told that some Muslim Arabs heard officers saying these Arabs will not get a single PR even if they were to live in Malaysia for 50 years. May I ask who told these officers that they had the right to say such things or to decide in advance who can get the PR or not? The general rule in these departments is that the PM can talk what ever he want to talk about but the implementation is in the hands of the officers. Abdullah Badawi once said that PR application will be expedited but when one visits the KDN it is a different story. The officers callously tells you the PM can say one thing, it is us here who do the decision making!

It will be the same damn thing with the 1Malaysia of Najib Tun Razak. The officers will rule over the Prime Minister or any other Ministers and nothing will change in the PR hand outs in Malaysia. Unless all those concerned are given the support by the families, the friends and even the press.

I once wrote to the Sun's Citizen Nade, asking him to look into the plight of foreign spouses and their children etc in Malaysia. His response was shockingly that of a 'pariah' of the worst kind when he stated in an email to me that 'one individual's plight was not worth it'. This is how Malaysian journalists responds!What will be the next step of the Foreign Spouses Support Group? I am surely eager to know and to report on their activities in the near future.