SAPP: Issuance of birth certs will eventually give illegals citizenship

KOTA KINABALU - The issuance of birth certificates to stateless children will only compound the already critical situation of illegal immigrants submerging Sabahans, says SAPP president.

Datuk Yong Teck Lee, a former Sabah Chief Minister, said the people of Sabah, who are increasingly suspicious of the failure of the government to release the RCI report after a long delay, are now hit with another slap by the Home Minister who declared that stateless children will be issued birth certificates.

"It is known that most of these children of illegal immigrants are street kids who have been separated from their parents. Some are foreign-born who came here with their parents. Some have been abandoned by their parents. Some have lost their parents because the parents have been detained and deported from their places of work like construction sites," he said.

"Whatever lawyers and the Home Minister have to say, it cannot be denied that many illegal immigrants are getting MyKads even without any birth certificate. If even illegals can get citizenship without any birth certificates, what more these street kids once they have been given birth certificates? Is this not a case of "birth certs now, Mykads later"?

Not only do they become Malaysians, they also would become Sabahans and Sabah natives. This is the key issue that makes Sabahans angry over what the federal authorities have been doing to Sabah.

Yong stressed that "Street kids" or "stateless children" is a humanitarian issue that the Malaysian, the Philippines and Indonesian governments must work to reunite the kids with their parents in their countries of origin. Reuniting families have been done in among countries and it can be done with these foreign street kids too. The humane thing to do is to reunite these poor kids with their parents, not to separate them from their parents by giving them Malaysian birth certificates.