LETTERS: THE Association of Family Support and Welfare Selangor and Kuala Lumpur (Family Frontiers) wants the government to conduct an immediate and thorough review of the approval process for permanent residence (PR) status for eligible non-citizen spouses of Malaysians.
Since 2018, only four approvals have been reported to Family Frontiers, two for spouses and the other two for children under the age of 6 years.
This left many non-citizen spouses in a lurch, making it difficult for them to plan and secure their future and that of their families. This has resulted in many professional binational families leaving the country.
A 2022 survey by Family Frontiers involving 65 respondents who applied for PR revealed that none had their PR applications approved; all applications were still pending, with 28 per cent waiting more than two years and 30.2 per cent of respondents waiting for approval more than four years.
The statement of prohibition on employment on the Long-Term Social Visit Pass (LTSVP) makes job insecurity a living nightmare for the foreign spouses of Malaysian spouses until they receive their PR status.
An example is Dewi (not real name), who, with a PhD in Pharmacy, faces significant challenges in Malaysia due to restrictive Immigration policies post-marriage. Initially, she worked as a lecturer on an employment pass.
However, soon after marrying and moving to another state with her husband, her visa had to be changed to a spousal visa. She went through the mandated six-month cooling from employment.
She had difficulties securing a job and is unable to obtain employment as local universities prioritised Malaysian applicants, a policy not applicable if she has a PR status. The lack of PR status among the foreign spouses of Malaysians has created a common narrative of financial insecurity, employment challenges and uncertainty.
Moreover, the delay in issuing PR status to the foreign wives of Malaysian men denies them the pathway to citizenship under Article 15 (1) within two years of obtaining PR.
The National Registration Department has deviated from the mandated eligibility as per the act, where any married woman whose husband is a citizen is entitled to being registered as a citizen as long as she has resided in the Federation throughout the two years preceding the date of the application and intends to do so permanently.
However, spouses are only allowed to apply for citizenship two years after PR, and a spouse is eligible to apply for PR after 5½ years on a spousal visa after marriage. It also takes anywhere between two and five years or more, with no guarantee, for the PR application to be approved.
As such, it is time that the government establish a streamlined PR process and make PR available to children of Malaysian citizens, including ensuring transparency with regard to eligibility, reasonable time frames and justification for rejection of the application.
A considerable number of binational families have chosen to leave the country due to the cumbersome bureaucratic processes they encounter.
Thus, the government could implement more family-friendly policies tailored to the needs of Malaysian binational families.
This includes streamlining and expediting processes related to work endorsements and residency status, fostering a more welcoming environment for foreign spouses, and encouraging them to contribute to the economy. In this regard, PR applications for the foreign spouses of Malaysians must be expedited to ensure their welfare is protected.
FAMILY FRONTIERS
Kuala Lumpur
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times