Register to legalize marriages involving foreign wives – NRD

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KOTA KINABALU: Sabah National Registration Department (NRD) director Ismail Ahmad has advised locals to legalize their marriages to foreign wives by properly registering with the related authorities so that their children can be recognized as Malaysian citizens.

“If the marriage is properly registered, there should be no problem. The children will be citizens. But it will be different if the marriage is not legal. In this case, the children will follow the mother’s citizenship status, even if the father is a genuine Malaysian,” he said.

Ismail said this to reporters when asked to comment on the issue of ‘stateless Sabahans’ during the Federal Civil Service Raya celebration at the Federal Administration Complex here yesterday.

The function was graced by Head of State Tun Juhar Mahiruddin and his wife Toh Puan Norlidah R M Jasni.

Ismail stressed that children born in Malaysia by a non-citizen mother can only adopt the father’s Malaysian citizenship if the marriage was legally registered.

“The child can be granted Malaysian citizenship as provided by Article 15A of the Malaysian Constitution only if the marriage is registered and legally recognized by the law.

“If they were married after the child was born, or in other words, the child was born before the marriage was legalized, then the child would still follow the mother’s status.

“If the couple registers the marriage later, then the child born after that can be Malaysian, but the previous one would still not be entitled to citizenship,” he said.

The ‘stateless Sabahan’ children born from mixed marriages between local men and foreign women has been an issue long highlighted by the opposition in Sabah, who has strongly been accusing the government of being unfair and not doing enough to give these children their rights as citizens.

Democratic Action Party (DAP), who claimed tens of thousands of such children having suffered discrimination and denied fair access to education and other basic needs, has been the most vocal on the issue.

Leaders from the party have continuously urged the government to give these children Malaysian citizenship on the basis that children whose one of the parents are Malaysian, are entitled to citizenship under the Malaysian Constitution.

To this, Ismail answered that the country’s law recognizes children of mixed marriages between a local and a foreigner as citizen only if the marriage is legal.

“The father may take a DNA test to prove the child is his but the issue is not who is the father of the children but the legal status of the marriage, whether it was properly registered and recognized by law or not,” he said, adding that most cases of unregistered marriage involved married local men secretly marrying another wife.

He also said children from local-foreigner mixed marriages would automatically be recognized as Malaysian citizen if the Malaysian parent is the mother.

On a separate issue, Ismail said no new cases of MyKad forgery had been reported, but there could still be people out there with fake ICs that were forged in the past but have managed to slip detection.

Meanwhile, Sabah Public Works Department director Ir Hj Amirullah Kamal when met at the function, informed that the bridge connecting Kampung Mesilou in Kundasang, which was damaged by a recent mud flood, had been reconnected.

“The bridge has been completed as promised and the villagers can now use the road which was disconnected after the flood. So we hope the prices of vegetables that had gone up following the incident can now return to normal,” he said.

Amirullah said the department had salvaged an unused Bailey Bridge from Buntuhan and installed it, replacing the one at Kampung Mesilou.

He said two other bridges connecting the road leading to Mesilou Resort that were washed away by the flood, were still not completed.