PETALING JAYA: Thousands of Malaysians caught in a quandary in the United States over the non-renewal of their MyKad will get a helping hand from the country’s ambassador to the United States.
Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz said he planned to send a team down from Washington next month to meet with National Registration Department (NRD) and Wisma Putra officials to work on a resolution.
This will be ahead of a planned visit to the United States by an NRD team and officials from other relevant departments.
“We are working on solving the issue,” he said when contacted yesterday.
The Star reported earlier that there are thousands of Malaysians in the US who have not been able to renew their MyKad, with one source in the Malaysia Association of America (MAA) estimating the figure at about 30,000.
It is learnt that most of the Malaysians affected are those who had left for the US in the 1980s and were now without any legal status there.
The MAA had, over the years, raised the matter with the Malaysian authorities to no avail.
They were previously told that the only way for them to renew their long-expired passports was to get back to Kuala Lumpur and renew their identity cards first.
Asked to give an exact date of the meetings here, Nazri said he would be fully briefed on the matter first.
MAA founder president Kim Bong, who is based in New York, hoped that the meeting between the embassy team and the relevant authorities here would be held as planned.
“The meeting was supposed to take place this month but I was informed that it will take place sometime in August. We are hoping for a resolution,” he said.
Previously, Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail suggested two options to make it easier for the affected group of Malaysians to renew their passports and MyKad.
The first was to do the process online as practised in Malaysia now, he said adding that if there were no issues, the passports could be printed at the Immigration attache’s office that has such facilities to issue passports such as in the US, Australia and the United Kingdom.
He said the other option was to physically attend or have in-person appointments at any of the Immigration attache’s offices abroad.
MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong had arranged for the meeting between Saifuddin and Bong and several of his MAA members in Kuala Lumpur.
It was earlier revealed that the Malaysian government has consented to in-person services for Malaysians needing to renew their MyKid/MyKad, without the need to travel home.
A notice stated that the Malaysian Embassy in Washington, together with the consulates- general in New York and Los Angeles, was planning to conduct in-person services for MyKad and MyKid for the affected group of Malaysians based in the US.
