ALTHOUGH llegal immigrants may try, mechanisms are in place to ensure they do not get registered for birth certificates or ICs at mobile registration drives carried out by the National Registration Department (NRD) in rural areas.
It is impossible for them to get Malaysian birth certificates and citizenship, said NRD Director, Ismail Ahmad.
"We are actually trying to help Malaysians, especially those in the interior whose children are without or with late-registration birth certificate and ICs," he said, in response to allegations by Semporna Bumiputera Bajau Association President, Mansor Santiri.
"Maybe this person (Mansor) does not know that in this programme, we register legal foreigners as well as locals.
"It might be true that a lot of them (illegals) come and wait with all the rest of the eligible people. But he might not know that their journey is only up to there, standing and waiting because they won't be entertained.
"For legal foreigners, we will issue a red birth certificate to the children whose parent, either the mother or father is a Malaysian.
For locals who have no documents due to factors such as lack of awareness and living too far from the city, we will issue a green birth certificate (original Malaysian birth certificate).
"We issue these documents to legal foreigners so that they can go to their embassy or consulate to get their passports done, whereas for our locals, we have to help them get their identification documents done so that they can go to school and so on," Ismail said.
He said the outreach programme currently being held in Semporna to register locals without valid identification documents, is meant to help the locals.
Mansor had on Wednesday called on the NRD to stop its mobile registration programme, fearing illegals may be getting their hands on Malaysian documents.
"From close observations made by the association members, almost all those who took the opportunity to register to get Malaysian identification documents appeared to be foreigners," he had said.
Ismail, in this respect, repeated that there was no such thing as the department registering illegal immigrants.
He said that since the programme started on Feb. 20, he said a total of 3,067 Malaysians were found to be without birth certificates.
A total of 193 children had court endorsement to get ICs while 731 of them are still without the court's endorsement.
He pointed out that before a programme is held, the NRD would first have a meeting with the District Officer and all community leaders of an area, then give them the family information form to be distributed to those applying for documentation.
"After that, all the forms will be sent to the NRD to be screened to verify whether those in the list are genuinely Malaysian, before putting the list out and calling the people involved to come and register after a couple of days," Ismail said.
It is only after screening that the department would set a date to conduct the mobile registration programme to the said village, he said.
He said representatives from the Immigration Department, special branch, court, Election Commission, and Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission among others will also be present then.
"This shows just how strict we are in issuing documents to the people.
We can stop this programme if that is what people in Semporna want, but don't come back to me again," he said.
If there really are suspicious cases and people trying to crawl their way into getting a citizenship, Ismail said they would straightaway refer the cases to the police (special branch) before proceeding further.
"For example, there were one or two cases in Sandakan recently, where the village head was trying to support the application of illegals to be registered to obtain Malaysian documents. They were caught and convicted," he revealed.
Further on, he said among those, who the NRD strictly do not entertain, are the palaau or sea gypsies.
"These people live without documents, and we cannot do anything about it.
Apart from that, those found to be illegal immigrants trying to get citizenship or identification documents also will not be entertained," he said.
"Only genuine locals or those born here, with one of their parents being a Malaysian will be entertained, but we still differentiate them using red (query certificate)," Ismail stressed.
Meanwhile, he explained that some of the reasons behind some people not having any valid documents are due to logistics.
"Some of them have to spend an amount of money and time and they just don't feel like doing it.
Some may think it's not important while some may feel that it would be troublesome because their father has more than one wife, and things just become more complicated.
"Some do not want to go through all the hassle of having to go to relevant agencies and departments because they might have got married kampung style, and so on," he pointed out.
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