Overseas-born children without citizenship suffer discrimination in many aspects

SHAH ALAM - Children without citizenship suffer discrimination not only in education but also in health care and sports, an impacted mother says.

Rachel Ng, a mother affected by Malaysia's citizenship law that did not allow mothers to confer their citizenship to their children born overseas, said that both children and mothers were equally affected by the law.

She said the process to enrol non-citizen children in government schools was extremely taxing since it was very time consuming and stressful any mothers to deal with.

Rachel further explained that many mothers who don’t know the details of the process often had no choice but to enrol their children into private schools, which burdened the family’s finances since it was expensive.

Not only that, non-citizen children were not eligible for scholarships, any national contest or programme even if they had the talent for it.

“It’s just sad that the government doesn't nurture these local talents.

“To be honest, why import footballers when you can nurture local talents? They could be the next generation of footballers,” she questioned.

She added that they were not entitled for Malaysian citizen’s benefits and had to pay prices fixed for foreigners should they seek medical health care.

“For my child who is in the international school, he has to pay double the price when it comes to immunisation.

“It is not easy to live as a non-citizen child, especially in a family that is struggling financially and struggling sustaining their jobs as well as the child and some children who need special needs or special care don’t have access to medical care if they are a non-citizen,” she said.

Ng said Malaysian mothers only asked for equal rights and they should not be blamed for their life choices when the fault lies with the unjust law.

“At the end of the day, we are not asking for more rights than men.

“We’re asking for equal rights so that we can call Malaysia a home and raise our children here as proud Malaysians without being subjected to discriminatory treatment by the government or scrutiny by people who don’t agree with our life choices.

“The unjust law has been going on for far too long now that I think it’s time to make things right and end the suffering of affected mothers as well as children who do not deserve being denied and rejected since birth,” she added.

She shared her experience on Sinar Daily Wacana English Edition titled ‘Sexist Citizenship Law: What’s Next?’ that went live yesterday with former Home Minister Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar, Batu Kawan MP Kasthuri Patto and Family Frontiers president Suri Kempe present as other panellists where they discussed the need for the country to aspire for gender equality by ending sexist citizenship laws.

On Aug 5, it has been reported that the Court of Appeal has decided in a split vote that Malaysian mothers cannot confer their citizenship to their children who were born abroad.

Article 14(1)(b) of Malaysia’s constitution gives fathers the automatic right to confer citizenship on their children born abroad – but omits any mention of mothers.

This led to incredible hardships for Malaysian women in terms of economy, finance and psychology as well as intersectional impacts on poor, minority, disabled and stateless women.