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Sunday July 19, 2009

A stateless limbo

Eurofile by CHOI TUCK WO


FOR Anne and Philip, their wedding next month should be the happiest day of their lives.

Yet, amid the joy of marrying the person she loves, the bride-to-be is filled with a tinge of sadness as the big day approaches.

By a cruel twist of fate, the Penang-born lass has found herself “trapped” in what can only be described as the most painful of circumstances – a stateless limbo.

Yeo (wearing tie, facing group) together with Jameson (beside him) and other campaign organisers meeting the Malaysian BOCs in London.

And Anne certainly does not want to be seen as marrying her British fiancé just to gain UK nationality.

“I want to fight for British citizenship on my own. That will be my best wedding present,” said an emotionally-charged Anne.

The lovestruck lady is part of a group of an estimated 500 to 1,000 British Overseas Citizens (BOCs) in Britain who have renounced their Malaysian citizenships in order to apply for BOC passports.

These ex-Malaysian nationals are mostly from Penang and Malacca who acquired the BOC status by virtue of being born in the two former British colonies before 1983.

But they are now stuck in a quandary. Having given up their Malaysian passports, they have been told their BOC passports do not entitle them to full British citizenship.

In other words, they have no legal status in Britain. They can visit their families in Malay­sia on 30-day tourist visas but with no guarantee of re-entering the UK using their BOC passports.

For instance, one BOC who returned to Penang on a social visit visa was turned away three times when he tried to re-enter Britain.

Being stateless, he was forced to spend the next two years flying between Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Korea, continuously renewing his visa for as short as 10 days. He finally married a Chinese girl and worked in China.

But he faces an uncertain future when his work permit expires. He may have to leave China or find himself stranded in an airport or border crossing due to the excessive number of passport stamps.

Tragic consequences

The poignant tales of the two Penangites were recounted during a pow-wow of nearly 40 BOCs at London Chinatown’s Rasa Sayang Restaurant jointly organised by London Citizens (www.londoncitizens.org.uk) and London’s Chinese Information and Advice Centre (CIAC – www.ciac.co.uk). The group planned to march to the Home Office as part of their Stateless Citizens campaign.

A member known as Dee said he arrived in the UK in 1998 and subsequently took three Masters’ programmes at Lincoln University over the years.

After spending more than £80,000 (RM480,000), including his EPF money, life savings and borrowings from family members and relatives for his studies and living costs, he found that he could not work officially in Britain. “I never thought that acquiring my BOC passport would render me de facto stateless,” said the Penangite.

Dee said he survived by doing part-time work as an architect but lost his job due to the economic downturn last year.

“We’re worse off than Malaysian overstayers. At least, they still have their passports even though their visas have expired,” he lamented.

Indeed, many BOCs have had their lives ruined by dodgy solicitors who misled them into giving up their Malaysian passports as a route to acquiring British citizenship.

Their BOC passports were found to be little more than “worthless pieces of documents” that do not entitle them to Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the UK or British nationality.

Compassionate grounds

In fact, Malaysia (which does not recognise dual nationality) considers them as British citizens since their BOC passports are issued by Britain.

Of course, the British Home Office’s seemingly inconsistent immigration rules are largely to blame for this sorry episode.

After being given the impression that BOCs can obtain ILR, they suddenly found their applications rejected in late 2007. By then, many had given up their Malaysian passports and MyKad.

In what is seen as a test case, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal recently dismissed the applications of 122 BOCs, one of the grounds being that they were not entitled to British citizenship.

London Citizens lead organiser Neil Jameson, however, believed the BOCs had the strongest case for amnesty because they have no citizenship at all.

“We’re making an appeal to Home Secretary Alan Johnson to regularise them based on compassionate grounds,” said Jameson, whose organisation is Britain’s biggest civil society with 130 groups comprising churches, trade unions and local associations.

CIAC’s Malaysian chairman Edmond Yeo echoed similar sentiments, drawing attention to a UK Border Agency senior officer’s response to his question on the BOC status just four days ago.

According to him, the agency’s director for simplification projects Peter Wrench had accepted that “there is a fringe British citizenship issue and that a way has to be found.”

“As far as I am concerned, it’s not like it is a closed-door thing. We will continue to lobby them,” Yeo said in reference to his question that was posed at a seminar on the migrant workforce and the UK economy on Wednes­day.

Whatever the outcome, the BOCs are in a bind and probably going through one of the most traumatic experiences of their lives.

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