Even though I’ve lived abroad since my late teens, I’ve always been proud to introduce myself as Malaysian, and still consider Malaysia home. So when I became pregnant, I looked into obtaining Malaysian citizenship for my son.
You may think that getting citizenship for a child born abroad is bound to be fraught with bureaucratic perils no matter where you’re from. But my French husband and I had very different experiences.
Let me start with how Alex got his French citizenship. Before he was born, my husband was told that he had to inform the French embassy of our son’s impending arrival, which he duly did. After the birth, my husband brought the hospital papers to them (my son didn’t have to be present), and within an hour, he was issued a French birth certificate which he promptly brought home.
The Malaysian experience, however, was a bit more complicated.
First of all, I’m a Malaysian woman living abroad. Before June 2010, children born abroad to Malaysian mothers with foreign spouses were not entitled to Malaysian citizenship. This discriminatory practice was accepted by most Malaysians abroad, just like it was accepted that you couldn’t vote if you lived outside Malaysia. I found this ridiculously chauvinistic. Why do children qualify for citizenship through their Malaysian fathers but not their Malaysian mothers?
Fortunately, Alex was born after the policy change and was thus eligible for Malaysian citizenship, or, more accurately, eligible to apply for citizenship. I found a website connected to the Malaysian High Commission in London detailing the procedure. Instructions on the website were divided into two columns, one for Malaysian fathers and the other for Malaysian mothers. For Malaysian fathers, the procedure bore similarities to the French one my husband had followed, which, incidentally, does not discriminate between a child’s parents. Malaysian mothers, on the other hand, were required to produce a number of documents and fill in a whole slew of forms, submit the entire shebang as an application, then wait a year for a decision. There would be no automatic approval, as it was granted on a case-by-case basis, leaving one vulnerable to the vagaries of the immigration department.
Think about this for a second. Someone in an office somewhere looks at your application and what does he or she evaluate? Your spouse’s nationality? Your occupations? Your ages? Which part of the world you live in? What exactly is the criteria for deciding whether your kid gets citizenship or not? Is there a quota for babies born of Malaysian mothers and French fathers? Who gets to be the judge of that? These are the questions I asked myself after I met other women who gone through the application process, but had yet to receive any news after more than a year.
When I regaled my fellow Malaysians with the complexities of this procedure, most reactions were variations on the theme of “Why bother? A French passport is much better.” Yes, unfortunately the world we live in may favour a French passport over a Malaysian one–I doubt that many French citizens have been detained at a border to be interrogated about the purpose of their visits, especially since 9/11. But a passport is more than just a travel document. A passport conveys upon its holder the right to live and work, access to social services and possessions not open to foreigners, and most importantly, the right to vote. I wanted very much for Alex to have the option to do all of that. I wanted him to have the chance to be Malaysian on a permanent basis if he so chooses. This means experiencing the whole lot: our national obsession with food; the exasperation when navigating the intricacies of our systems, roads and racial relationships; the comfort and frustration of having your extended family be a part of everyday life; pride at our openness and warmth to strangers; the fear as crime continues to affect people close to us; the thrill of participating in elections for our representatives, however flawed it may be. I want him to feel like he can be a part of the spectrum of who and what is Malaysian without having to constantly justify himself to bureaucrats if he wanted to make his life here.
So we plodded through with the whole thing. I called the Malaysian embassy, who were oblivious to the June 2010 policy change, but they managed to find the communiqués from Putrajaya with the relevant forms to fill. We rustled up the paperwork, bundled up our newborn in the coldest winter we’d had in years, waited at the embassy for hours so he could press his tiny thumbs onto his application papers, and declared his French citizenship. Everything was above board. I felt at peace with myself. I’d done my duty to try and get him citizenship, and now we’d just have to wait and see.
True to that website (which has since been removed or moved), almost exactly a year after that long, cold day, I heard from the embassy that I had received a decision. They were reluctant to tell me over the phone if it was positive, but it sounded like good news, so we went to the embassy in anticipation. Lo and behold, we received a letter congratulating us for having had our application approved, along with a moving letter from the Home Minister. The embassy staff were sufficiently impressed to assemble us for a photo op. I was tickled and proud about the whole thing.
Incidentally, nowhere between the application for and the receipt of Alex’s certificate of citizenship and MyKid has there been any formal communication informing me that Alex will have to choose between passports when he reaches a certain age. I’m glad though, when the time comes, as I’m expecting that it will despite the absence of a warning, that at least he will have that choice.
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Uma is a Malaysian working mum with a French husband and a toddler named Alex living in their fourth country together.
