M A C V A Y S I A

Today Leen and I drove out to Shah Alam and braved the labyrinth that is Kompleks PKNS to submit the documents to the Immigration Dept. for renewal of my pass. I was pleasantly surprised by a few things today:

1) I only needed to submit three forms: the declaration of marriage (stamped by a commissioner of oaths), an extension form, and a visa application form. I thought I’d been given the wrong forms, or not enough forms, but it turned out those three were all I needed.

2) I didn’t need a mountain of supporting documentation. Besides those three forms, I only had to submit one photocopy each of my passport (the main page and the page with my valid pass), Leen’s IC, and our marriage certificates.

3) The immigration officers were friendly and, dare I say, pleasant. Two of the three we spoke with today even smiled. I kid you not.

4) My new pass (one year) was processed in just a few hours. I’d never submitted all the required documents and got my pass all on the same day before this. I was impressed.

But this is a post about PR, right? Okay, so we also talked to one of the officers who handle PR. Here’s what we learned:

1) The Malaysian government is still serious about giving PR to foreign spouses.

2) However, if you’re a foreign spouse, you need to have been here at least five or six years (I can’t remember which).

3) Also, you need to have been here the entire time on a spouse visa. If you recently married a Malaysian and just got here, you need to stay here for several years on the visa that recently replaced the spouse visa, which is pretty much the same thing, before you can apply for PR. If you’ve been here for several years but weren’t on the old spouse visa (for example, if you were on a regular work visa), then those years won’t count and you’ll still have to wait several years before you can apply for PR.

4) Even if you’ve been here the minimum number of years on the old spouse visa (like me), if you were to apply for PR now your application would definitely be rejected. That’s because every time you got your spouse visa in the past there was a little note the Immigration people had in their system that said something like “This poor sod can’t even apply for PR.” They’re currently changing their system so that previous years people spent here under the old spouse programme will count towards new PR applications. But we were told today that process is ongoing and won’t be completed until at least February. So if you’ve been here several years and spent most or all of them on a spouse visa, you can apply for PR but you should wait a couple more months.

I just got a one-year visa, plus I’ve got a kid on the way, so I’m going to wait until maybe April to apply for PR. Then we’ll see how long it takes for a decision, and whether it’s a good one. I know better than to expect the best possible outcome, but if today was any indication then it’s possible this story may have a happy ending after all. We’ll see.

For some perspective, here are my last few posts regarding immigration and the quest for Permanent Resident status in Malaysia:

Like a (Visa) Virgin, Approved for the Very First (or 17th) Time
Light at the End of the Tunnel?
Malaysian PR: Some McVay Guy’s Thoughts (and Mine)
Malaysian PR: Another Hopeful Sign
Malaysian PR: The Catch

With all the family history stuff I write here in my blog, one might begin to wonder why I don’t write about my wife’s family history. Well unfortunately genealogy is a very difficult endeavour here in Malaysia. A lack of accessible records (and in many cases a lack of records, period) means you’re forced to rely almost completely on oral histories. That’s not a horrible thing, as the old folks here can tell you quite a bit. However, reliance on oral histories definitely has its drawbacks, the major ones being 1) you won’t get very far back into the history of any given family, 2) you won’t get a lot of specific information such as dates, and 3) you will get a lot of stories that include all sorts of fantastical elements.

That pretty much describes my wife’s family history. I haven’t been able to go very far back, especially on her mother’s side of the family. Even when I have been able to find information on ancestors, it was usually just their names, with the rest of those people’s lives remaining shrouded in the fog of time. Also, while there are family members who claim to know a lot about the family history, it’s difficult to know how much of it is true. Leen’s paternal ancestry is rife with tales of jinn and psychic powers; her maternal ancestry, if the uncle who’s supposed to know the most about it can be believed, includes a pirate treasure at the bottom of the sea.

Still, when it comes to Leen’s family history, I’ll take what I can get. After all, it’s all part of my children’s ancestry as well. And mine, in a way. I mean, these people are my family now. Their blood doesn’t run through my veins, but still…we’re family.

Anyway, the furthest I could trace back in Leen’s family was a man named Raden Ipok (no one is sure of the actual spelling), who lived in Pekalongan, in Central Java, Indonesia sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century. I know very little about him other than his name and the fact that he was not a Muslim. I’m not absolutely sure what religion he followed, though it seems he was either a Buddhist or an animist (his indigenous culture, whatever it was, may have included elements of animism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, or at least some of those things). His son, Raden Peroyo, supposedly had 17 wives but only ended up with three children. One of those children was named something like Raden Ritz. He was the one who brought the family into the fold of Islam. As the story goes, Raden Ritz fell in love with the daughter of a kyai (the head of an Islamic boarding school) and converted to Islam so he could marry her. Upon conversion he changed his name to Rais.

Accounts of this lineage by different family members begin to diverge somewhat here. One story has it that Rais had a son named Qudri or Qadri and that he, not Rais, was Leen’s great-great-grandfather. In yet another version of the family history, there isn’t even a Rais, and Leen’s great-great-grandfather is Peroyo. Whatever the case, after either Rais or Qudri (or maybe even after Peroyo) came Leen’s great-grandfather, Raden Falali (sometimes called Palali), who married a woman named Ummayah. They were fairly well off, with lots of land and horses and other material wealth. Leen’s eldest surviving uncle, Pak Andak, says that Raden Falali feared for the lives of his two sons because of the persecution of several noble families by the Dutch. He sent the boys to Malaysia on a steamship, but before they went he supposedly gave the elder of the two, 15-year old Raden Baron, a slip of paper upon which was written the name Salma, which wasn’t a woman’s name but that of a jinn (and a male one at that) that would protect Baron and his brother in Malaysia.

Baharom Bin Fadzil & Jamiah Binti Yusof

Raden Baron dropped the title Raden when he got to Malaysia and changed his name to Baharom Bin Fadzil (I’m not sure if Falali actually used the name Fadzil or not). Baharom settled in Muar, Johor and married a woman named Jamiah, a daughter of Javanese settlers named Yusof and Rubiah. Yusof was one of several brothers (three or four) who settled in Kampung Tengah in Muar. I’ve been told that about 90% of the people in Kampung Tengah are Leen’s relatives.

No one really knows what happened to Baharom’s brother, Selamat, also known as Pak Ngah Selamat. It seems shortly after getting married he was taken by the Japanese, who occupied Malaya from 1941 until the end of World War II. He was put on a train and sent north to help build a railway in a neighbouring country. One version of the story says he managed to jump off the train somewhere in Kedah and carried on with his life. According to another version of the story, he was taken to Burma but eventually released by the fearful Japanese, who had tried to boil him alive but couldn’t hurt him. Whatever the truth is, Selamat was never seen again.

Baharom had many different jobs over the years (including working the ferry that crossed the Muar River) and was supposedly aided in each by the jinn that accompanied him everywhere, the one whose name was written on the little slip of paper that Baharom always carried with him (usually in his hat). Stories abound of his miraculous accomplishments, such as completing a week’s worth of grass-cutting in one evening, or buying a banana and somehow arriving home with a whole bunch of them. His feats didn’t go unnoticed by others. One day he was riding his bicycle near his home when he was struck by a car belonging to Othman Saat, who was also from Kampung Tengah. Othman was shocked to see that while the bicycle was wrecked, Baharom didn’t have a scratch on him. Family lore has it that Othman coveted Baharom’s source of power. Baharom, fearful that the jinn’s power would corrupt him and anyone else it touched, buried the slip of paper with the jinn’s name on it somewhere on property that belonged to Othman. Othman dug it up and became the Chief Minister of Johor.

Baharom is the man holding the little girl; on the right is Jamiah. The little boy standing in front of Jamiah is my father-in-law, Abdul Rahman; next to him is his sister Aminah (Busu Noi). I’d like to find out who the other people in the picture are and if they’re also Leen’s relatives.

Baharom and Jamiah lived a quiet life in Muar and had 16 children, one of whom was Leen’s father, Abdul Rahman. Half of Baharom and Jamiah’s children, including my father-in-law and a set of triplets (Salam, Salim and Selamat), have passed away. The remaining children are Mak Uda, Pak Andak, Mak Alang, Mak Uteh, Mak Anjang, Bibik, Busu Noi, and Pak Jak (those aren’t their real names, just the names I know them by). It’s interesting to note that while none of them use the title Raden, Leen has one cousin (a daughter of the late Abdul Kadir, a.k.a. Pak Long) who does. I’m told some of Leen’s cousins also include the name al-Qudri in their names to denote descent from Raden Qadri/Qudri, who as I mentioned above may have been the son of Raden Rais.

Baharom, who would be called Tok Bak by Leen and his other grandchildren, continued to show signs of having mystical abilities throughout his life, despite having given up the slip of paper upon which was written the name of his jinn guardian. The slip of paper may have functioned as some sort of talisman, but apparently it wasn’t the true source of Baharom’s powers (as Othman Saat may have later discovered, when the rise of Mahathir and Musa Hitam led to his marginalization and eventual resignation, and a failed comeback attempt via the short-lived party Semangat 46). Baharom did his best to keep his abilities secret, but Leen remembers seeing some strange things. For example, she says one day she was in a room with Tok Bak, but then when she turned around and looked out the window, there he was, suddenly outside. His grandchildren loved him, but it seems most of them, including Leen, thought he was a little scary because of things like that. I’m not sure how much of it I can bring myself to believe, but I do wish I could have met him. Both of Leen’s paternal grandparents died several years ago.

Tok Bak in his later years.

I wish I knew as much about Leen’s maternal ancestry as I do about her father’s family history. Leen’s dad, Abdul Rahman Bin Hj. Baharom (Hj. is an abbreviation of Haji, which means Baharom had gone on the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca) married a nurse from Batu Pahat named Mariah Binti Hasnan, who is now my mother-in-law, my beloved Ibu. Whereas my late father-in-law was of Javanese descent, Ibu is of Bugis ancestry. Her father, Hasnan Bin Mohamed Ali, was a jack-of-all-trades who did various jobs in and around Kampung Minyak Beku. He married Khatijah Binti Osman and they had three girls, including my mother-in-law. However, Hasnan and Khatijah divorced not long after the birth of their third child, and Hasnan married a woman named Hamidah. She bore him several more children (I’m told that in all she had 16 children but I don’t know if some were from a previous marriage or not). Hasnan died fairly young, the first of Leen’s grandparents to pass away. Hamidah, whom Ibu calls Mak Uda, is still living in Kampung Minyak Beku; we usually visit her during Raya.

Abdul Rahman Bin Hj. Baharom & Mariah Binti Hasnan (a.k.a. Ayah & Ibu) on their wedding day.

Khatijah, Ibu’s mother, remained single for many years, but a tragic event would eventually lead her to marry again. When her older sister passed away, Khatijah became close to her newly-widowed brother-in-law. Each wanted someone who would take care of them, so they got married. Sadly, Khatijah developed breast cancer and, like her sister and her first husband, left the world too soon. Her second husband, heartbroken, followed soon after.

Abdul Rahman and Mariah, a.k.a. Ayah and Ibu, had their first child, Mazleen (yeah that’s my wife) in 1978 when Ibu was stationed at a government clinic in Salak Tinggi, Selangor. Leen was born in Seremban Hospital and spent her childhood in Minyak Beku and Muar. She later went to Sekolah Tun Fatimah, a boarding school in Johor Bahru. She then did two years of matriculation at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia before going off to Canada for five years, after which she came back with a degree in dentistry from Dalhousie University and (ahem) a husband from Cape Breton. Ayah and Ibu had three other children, all of whom have spent most of their lives in Muar. Leen’s brother Radzee (a.k.a. Ojee) is a JPJ (Road Transport Dept.) officer stationed in Muadzam, Pahang; Leen’ s sister Mazuin (a.k.a. Achik) works as a cook at the Sultanah Fatimah Specialist Hospital in Muar; Leen’s other brother, Ridzwan (a.k.a. Iwan) has been doing an IT diploma progamme at a college in Jitra, Kedah.

Leen with Ayah, Ibu, Iwan, Achik & Ojee.

Everyone’s been married off except Iwan. Ojee is married to a lovely young lady from Pagoh named Latifah, a.k.a. Tipah; Achik’s been married and divorced and has a son named Afiq, Alisdair’s only first cousin on this side of the world (he also has two in Canada). Achik’s getting married again this year, to a guy from Bengkalis, Indonesia.

It goes without saying that Leen has a lot of cousins. Her relatives are all over the country and work in a wide variety of professions, such as the doctor who delivered Alisdair in Shah Alam. It’s actually really hard to keep track of Leen’s extended family. There are some I’ve never met or hardly ever see. There are also some we’re quite close to, like Bibik’s family. I think of them as my family too, just like I consider Leen’s parents and siblings to be my family.

Celebrating Hari Raya in 2007 with my Malaysian family. Ayah passed away just a few weeks later.

My father-in-law passed away on November 6th 2007 in Muar, only two months after retiring from his job as an auditor for the local school district. Ayah’s passing was hard on Ibu but she’s been doing just fine. She retired not long ago and now spends a lot of time with her grandson Afiq. She gets to spend time with Alisdair quite often too. I don’t think Al will remember his Tok Ayah, but we’ll be sure to tell him as many stories as we can about his grandfather, and the other people from both sides of the world whose blood runs in his veins. We’ll tell him all about how his Tok Ayah was a pretty good drummer and had a great singing voice. We’ll tell him that his Tok Ayah would do anything for anyone, even if it meant he had to go without. We’ll tell Al all sort of stories about his Tok Ayah, and maybe a few about ancestors from further back.

As I said earlier, there are several different versions of the story of Baharom and his ancestors. It seems Tok Bak himself told more than one version of his family history. The result is that his children and grandchildren might not all agree on what the real story is. One of his grandchildren (the one I mentioned earlier who calls herself Raden) swears direct descent from the saints known as the Wali Songo, particularly Sunan Ampel. If that is indeed true, it can’t be through the direct paternal line (maybe through the kiai instead?), which may have been Buddhist until the mid-19th century or maybe even later. Of course, there’s no way of really knowing if that is even true. I don’t know anything about Javanese history, but I have to wonder if anyone in a family of Buddhists (or animists or any non-Muslims for that matter) would have even carried the title Raden.

Some information on the family written in the Jawi script, supposedly by Tok Bak himself. I can read Jawi newspapers with some effort but this handwriting really has me stumped. If anyone would like to have a go at it, I’d appreciate knowing what it says. There’s another sheet of paper on which he wrote a short genealogy in Rumi script, but I’m not sure if both pages have the same information.

Whether the story of Baharom is true or not, it certainly is interesting. And at least there actually is a story. It’s a shame that most of my kids’ maternal ancestry will be a big blank space compared to what I can tell them about my side of the family. But at least there is a story to tell. Maybe we’ll even uncover more someday, somehow. Who knows?

One of the biggest problems most people will face when researching their family history is that as they go back through the generations they will find fewer and fewer women. The women were there, of course; after all, they make up fully half of anyone’s genealogy. But in days gone by, women were commonly ignored in official records. When you’re looking at generations that are beyond the reach of family stories and memories, lack of documentation means a lot of people, especially women, will remain as blank spots on your family tree. This problem affects men too (I don’t know who the parents of Alexander MacVay and Elizabeth Armour were, for example), but there will usually be cases where you can find at least the name of a male ancestor — and maybe more information as well — but his spouse has been left behind by history; it’s almost never the other way around. For example, some old census records only recorded heads of households; their wives remain anonymous, unless we find information on them from other sources. Even when we can find some information about our female ancestors, it’s usually not as much as what we know about their male counterparts. We often don’t know their real family names, who their parents were, where they were from, etc. It’s even worse in Malaysia: I only need to go back to Leen’s great-grandparents to find blank spaces where I wish I could find the names of the women who belong in those spaces. It’s sad.

The good news is that while stories about my female ancestors are few and far between, I do know some stories, about fascinating women who lived fascinating lives in fascinating times. One story I find particularly fascinating is that of the woman who became the matriarch of my maternal grandmother’s family, the Martells.

The story begins in Paris, France, in the year 1668. It was in that year that 23-year-old Marguerite L’Amirault said goodbye to her family and set out on a journey that would take her to the New World, never to see France again. She was going to Quebec (then called New France) with many other French women as part of a program called Les Filles du Roi — The Daughters of the King. None of these women were actually daughters of the king; most came from families that couldn’t afford to pay dowries, which meant it was difficult for these young women to find husbands. Fortunately for them, there was a fairly large population of French men who couldn’t find wives. Unfortunately, those men were on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where they had gone to establish New France. To entice poor French women to go to New France and marry the Frenchmen there, the French government offered not only free transport but also attractive dowries to women willing to make the move. Here’s a good description of the program from a recent post at a great genealogy website:

Starting in 1663, the French government recruited eligible young French women who were willing to travel to New France to find husbands. The King of France offered to pay for transportation to New France of any eligible young woman. He also offered a dowry for each, to be awarded upon her marriage to a young Frenchman. Each woman’s dowry typically consisted of 1 chest, 1 taffeta kerchief, 1 ribbon for shoes, 100 needles, 1 comb, 1 spool of white thread, 1 pair of stockings, 1 pair of gloves, 1 pair of scissors, 2 knives, about 1,000 pins, 1 bonnet, 4 laces, and 2 silver livres (French coins). Many also received chickens, pigs, and other livestock. Because the King of France paid the dowries instead of the parents, these women were referred to as the “Daughters of the King,” or “Filles du Roi.”

Their travels must have been difficult. In 1664, the Conseil Souverain reported to the French minister for the colonies, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, that sixty of the 300 people who embarked at La Rochelle the previous year had died at sea before reaching New France.

Since most of the women who took up the offer were from poor families, and the voyage was not without its dangers, not to mention the fact that life as a pioneer in New France would be rough, it might come as a surprise that some of the Filles du Roi came from relatively well-to-do families. Marguerite L’Amirault was one of them. When she stepped out of her house on Rue des Poullies she was right in front of the Louvre. Her father, Francois L’Amirault, was a coachman for the Royal Household. She certainly didn’t need the dowry, and probably could have found a suitable husband right there in the centre of Paris. So why did she get on a ship and go to New France?

The plot thickens upon Marguerite’s arrival in New France. She could have received a dowry befitting her status by marrying an officer. Instead, she chose to marry a common solider, and therefore got a lower dowry. Not only that, but the soldier she married, Honoré Martel, was 36 years old. He was 13 years Marguerite’s senior, and older than most of the other soldiers. He had been a soldier for some time and had seen a lot of fighting. Now he wanted to settle down. Why would Marguerite L’Amirault give up her comfortable life in Paris and sail all the way to the New World just to marry a common soldier who could only offer her a life of hard work?

At least one researcher (here, and here if you can read French) has a theory that to me sounds like a reasonable explanation. Honoré Martel was a son of Jean Martel and Barbe Marie Duschesne. Jean Martel, whose parents were Jean Martel and Anne Marizy, was a horse merchant in Paris. Jean and Barbe Marie lived on Rue des Ursulines, mere blocks away from where Marguerite’s family lived (Marguerite’s street, Rue des Poullies, no longer exists, but Rue des Ursulines is still there). Also, the fact that Honoré’s father worked as a horse merchant would almost certainly have put him into contact with Marguerite’s father, who was a coachman, especially since Jean’s business was on Rue de Richelieu, near the Louvre. So it’s quite possible (I daresay probable) that Honoré and Marguerite knew each other growing up in Paris. There are all sorts of possible reasons that Marguerite left Paris to marry an aging ex-soldier in the wilderness of New France. Maybe she just wanted an adventure. But I think there was more to it than just adventure. I think she did it all for love.

Honoré and Marguerite, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, were married in 1668 and had many children, who in turn had many children, and so on. Their life in what would one day be Canada was hard — neither of them was really prepared for the life of a farming family in New France — but they built a life and a family together despite the hardships they faced. Marguerite died fairly young, at the age of 62, on 17 October 1706, at a hospital called l’Hôtel-Dieu de Québec; Honoré married Marie Marchand a year later, so his youngest children would have a mother. But he and Marie never had any children. Honoré and Marguerite’s offspring grew into a family that probably appears in the family trees of most people with a significant number of Acadian ancestors. You can see some members of the Martel/Martell family (13 generations of them!) at my fourth cousin (twice removed) Bob Martell’s site.

I guess this means I have a good reason to visit Paris someday!

I guess the timing of all this talk about ancestry and Bumiputera status couldn’t have been better. In the comments to my recent post about ‘official’ ancestry and the new birth certificates, there was some mention of the differences between West Malaysia and East Malaysia, particularly with regards to Bumiputera status. Basically, while someone born in West Malaysia need only have one Bumiputera parent in order to enjoy Bumiputera satus, in Sabah and Sarawak things have been different. In Sabah, the Bumiputera had to specifically be the father of the child; in Sarawak, both parents had to be Bumiputera. The most obvious effect of this was to deny Bumiputera status to children of mixed marriages where the father was not Bumiputera, and in Sarawak’s case, any mixed Bumiputera/non-Bumiputera marriage.

Notice I switched to past tense there. That’s because the Government of Malaysia recently decided that children in Sabah and Sarawak with at least one Bumiputera parent (mother or father) will now enjoy Bumiputera status. A big hat tip to Bin Gregory, who alerted me to a memo from the Ministry of Higher Education to all institutions of higher education in Sabah and Sarawak, which basically says exactly what I’ve stated above.

This is definitely good news. I’m not sure whether they did it because it was the right thing to do, or because the bestowal of Bumiputera status on the mixed children of a certain East Malaysian politician with staggering wealth and power was seen as a way to keep him, his children, and the BN government firmly entrenched there. Whatever the government’s reason, this change to the rules is good for the people of Sabah and Sarawak, and for the country as a whole.

UPDATE: Following is the text of the memo, which can be downloaded here.

23 November 2009

SENARAI SEPERTI LAMPIRAN I

Y.Bhg. Tan Sri/Datuk/Dato’/Prof.,

PENGIKTIRAFAN SECARA PENTADBIRAN STATUS BUMIPUTERA KEPADA RAKYAT DI SABAH DAN SARAWAK YANG SALAH SEORANG IBU ATAU BAPA ADALAH BUMIPUTERA

Dengan hormatnya, saya merujuk kepada perkara di atas.

Dimaklumkan bahawa Kerajaan telah bersetuju untuk mengiktiraf secara pentadbiran taraf Bumiputera kepada rakyat di Sabah dan Sarawak, iaitu bagi anak-anak yang salah seorang ibu atau bapanya adalah Bumiputera. Kerajaan juga memutuskan supaya semua kementerian, jabatan dan agensi Kerajaan melaksanakan keputusan tersebut.

Sekian, terima kasih.

“BERKHIDMAT UNTUK NEGARA”

Saya yang menurut perintah,

(DATUK DR. ZULKEFLI A. HASSAN)

You can read more about this in Bin Gregory’s reaction to the news.

I’m on fire today! Two very productive calls to Malaysian government departments — both conducted completely in Malay (yay for fluency!) — and look at this, two blog posts. After my conversation with a surprisingly friendly and helpful officer at the National Registration Department, I called the Immigration Department to see if I could get some more information about the government’s recently-unveiled plans to give PR status to foreign spouses of Malaysian citizens. The extension listed on an Immigration document I have at home was wrong, so I got some lady in the Student Visa section who had obviously been sleeping when the phone rang. She drowsily sent me back to the main switchboard, and I was finally connected to someone in the Entry Permit Section.

Now, I’m pleased with my fluency in Malay — at least it’s better than a few years ago, when the prospect of speaking Malay on the phone scared the hell out of me — but I have to admit I didn’t understand this guy as well as the guy at the National Registration Department. I think maybe my fluency diminishes as my morning coffee wears off. But I did manage to ask him all the questions I had, and I did get fairly comprehensible answers to those questions. Just for the record, if I didn’t understand something he said, I asked him to repeat and/or clarify. So here’s what he told me:

The good news is, eligible foreign spouses can apply for PR immediately. The Immigration officer said I could go and get the forms tomorrow morning if I want. However, here’s the catch: even under the new initiative recently unveiled as part of next year’s budget, foreign spouses will have to wait six years before they’re eligible for PR. That is, if you’re married to a Malaysian and you want PR status, you’ll need to have lived here for at least six consecutive years, during which you were either under the now-defunct Spouse Programme or an equivalent.

Is anyone really surprised that there’s a catch? I’m certainly not. That’s Malaysia. There is a bit of hope though, as the officer said time already spent in Malaysia before this new initiative does count, even the years I spent under the old Spouse Programme. That contradicts what I was told on my last visit to Immigration, which was basically that I still have to wait six years because the Spouse Programme’s replacement is new and I’m starting from scratch. I really, really hope the new initiative means my previous visas count, because that would mean I really could apply for PR right away. But again, I have to look at this with a skeptic’s eye and assume there’s a big chance they’ll tell me I can only apply in 2015, six years from the time I got my current pass. I’m sure they’ll find a way to make me start from zero, because they’ve done it several times already.

For foreign spouses who just got here, or are about to move here: you’ll definitely be waiting a while for your PR.

So that’s it, straight from the source. If I get any more information, I’ll be sure to share it here in my blog.

Some of you may know by now that Leen and I are expecting our second child (you can call him A2 for now) sometime in March. That means I’ll be doing all that baby stuff again, which includes not only sleepless nights (woohoo, can’t wait) but also a visit to the National Registration Department to get our child a birth certificate. I blogged about the registration of Alisdair’s birth here. If you don’t want to read that post, here’s a summary: the form asked for both my keturunan and Leen’s; since keturunan means ancestry and my ancestors migrated to Canada from Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, I put European on the form. Traditionally, children in Malaysia (at least in the dominant Malay culture) have taken on the ethnicity, religion, etc. of their fathers. So technically, at least according to his birth certificate, Alisdair is not Malay but European.

As someone who’s interested in culture, history, and genealogy — and as someone who spends way too much time thinking about things when most people would have just moved on — I’ve spent the last few years wondering about the choice I made that day, identifying myself and my son as European. After all, he’s never been to Europe, and the only time I’ve ever been there was a brief transit through Stockholm on my last trip home in 2005. I suppose if I had to choose just one population to identify with in terms of ancestry, I’d just go along with what the MacVays have been identifying themselves as for several hundred years: Scottish. But I went with European anyway, since it’s also technically true. I certainly wasn’t going to go with Caucasian or White or anything like that.

Well, it turns out European is exactly what the Malaysian government considers my ancestry to be; the National Registration Department would have put that into their system even if I had put Scottish or Canadian (which one could argue is a good label for my ancestry, though it’s more accurately my nationality) on the form. I know that because fellow blogger Bin Gregory recently visited the NRD/JPN to register his youngest son (his seventh child, I believe). Here’s what he told me:

JPN has redesigned their birth certificates again. For the first time, the race of the child is listed right on the cert. As you know, in the past it listed the race of the mother and father but not the kid, leaving the child’s race undetermined. Well not anymore - the kid takes the father’s race and now I have my first official European child, haha, though in fact the JPN told me all my kids are in the computer as Euro. Just thought I’d tell ya, in case you were as confused as I was about it. I asked to be listed as American, but that’s not a recognized category, apparently. I don’t suppose Canadian is either. :-)

So I guess I made the right choice in identifying myself as European, since that’s what all ‘white’ parents of Malaysian children are labeled with anyway. But Bin Gregory’s experience did leave me somewhat confused. When I registered Alisdair’s birth I already suspected that the lack of space for his keturunan on the form meant his would just follow mine, but I was never really sure. Leen and I always assumed — or rather hoped — that the lack of an official keturunan for Al meant we could get away with identifying him as Malay. But again, we were never sure. With this new information, it seemed we had our answer: all ‘white’ parents are European by default; children inherit the keturunan of their fathers by default; therefore, Alisdair is officially European, not Malay. OK, fair enough (he’s still got bumiputera status anyway, by virtue of having one Malay parent), but I needed to be sure. So I went straight to the source.

Today I called the National Registration Department and asked someone there the following questions: 1) Do all ‘white’ parents of Malaysian children have European as their keturunan? 2) Do children automatically follow their fathers? 3) If a child’s ancestry is European, does that mean the child is officially non-Malay, even if the child’s mother is Malay?

1) According to the friendly officer who spoke with me (I didn’t get his name because I’m really horrible at remembering to ask for names like that, and even worse at remembering them), yes, all ‘white’ parents of Malaysian children are automatically European. It doesn’t matter what they enter for their keturunan, because in the department’s system they’re on file as European. That’s why Bin Gregory was told all of his children were in the system as European, even though that’s not what he’d listed as his ancestry. Whether you’re American, Canadian, or actually one of the various flavours of European, you’re European to the Malaysian government. As long as you’re ‘white’ anyway. Asian ancestries are broken down (Malay, Chinese, Indian, etc.) but those from outside Asia are put into larger groupings. So if you’re American, Canadian, European or whatever, and you happen to be black, well then your ancestry will probably be in the system here as African (though that’s just an assumption, since I didn’t specifically ask about non-white foreigners).

2) Yes, children automatically follow their fathers. So if my ancestry is European, my children are considered European as well. However, that’s just the default. For more information on that, let’s look at the answer to the next question.

3) Yes, if the father’s ancestry is European, and the child is officially European as well, then the child is not Malay. Bumiputera, yes, but not Malay. However, like I said above, that’s just the default. This is where the reasoning for specifying the child’s keturunan on the birth certificate comes in: parents can now choose to have their children be officially identified with either of their ancestries. So when our next child is born, I’ll be European, Leen will be Malay, and A2 can be either one. I’m not completely comfortable with this, as I would prefer to have both lineages count towards his ancestry (even if that meant he would be put into the system as Eurasian). But it’s good news for anyone who really wants their kids to be ‘officially’ Malay. We’re still undecided. I mean, Al (along with his future adik) is for all intents and purposes Malay, no matter what label the government puts on him; plus, like I said, he’s also a bumiputera, which will come in handy. What we need to figure out is whether or not there’s any real advantage to being not just Bumiputera but a Malay Bumiputera. Being a Muslim and a Bumiputera should mean our kids will have plenty of opportunities and privileges even if they’re not technically Malay (opportunities and privileges which ideally all Malaysians would enjoy, but I’m thinking as a parent here).

But there’s a catch: children born before the introduction of the new birth certificate are considered to be of whatever ancestry their fathers are; to change the official ancestry of a child born before the new birth cert came out, parents have to apply to the National Registration Department. The officer I spoke to reminded me that there’s no guarantee such applications will be approved. So it’s quite possible that if we choose to register A2 as Malay, we’ll have one European kid and one Malay kid, even though both have the same parents. That would be a bit strange.

As I view any news related to the possibility of getting Malaysian PR with a skeptical eye, I’ve been saying that even if the government were serious about this whole PR thing it would still take a long time for me to get PR. Why? Well, I’ve been aware for some time now that there was a huge backlog of PR applications sitting in a pile somewhere. I thought there were about 5,500 applications, but the Home Minister recently stated that there were actually 16,812. I don’t think I have to explain how a sentence with the words government, inefficiency, and backlog sounds much, much worse when that number is added into the mix. Ever the skeptic, I thought that was the catch: they’ll give me PR, but they’ll spend years going through that pile first.

However, over the weekend the Home Ministry proudly announced that it had driven its employees like pistons and cleared over 140,000 applications, including those 16,812 applications for PR. Wow, that is pretty impressive, though I hope the speed wasn’t the result of having one guy go through the pile with a big stamp that says REJECTED. (See? I can’t turn off the skepticism here.)

Still, it is a positive sign; I look forward to seeing more of those.

The other night a reporter from the Malay Mail called me to get my thoughts on the recent announcement that foreign husbands will get PR. Here’s the article that appeared the next day, entitled ‘Budget 2010: Visa cheer for expats’:

THE 2010 Budget announced by the Prime Minister last Friday has brought smiles to expatriates planning to spend more time here.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak in his maiden budget announced that the government would be making it easier for talented and skilled expatriates to get permanent residence (PR) status in a bid to drive the economy forward.

He said visas would automatically be granted to working family members within 14 days for those coming to work here, in addition to the extension of PR status to foreigners married to Malaysian women.

This was well received by expatriates residing in Malaysia who have been longing for PR status.

Canadian Jordan McVay, 35, who has been living here for the past seven years after marrying a Malaysian said he would be elated if the government kept to its announcement.

“Within seven years, I have had 17 visas and each trip to the Immigration Department has been frustrating. I have been told so many times that it would be difficult to obtain PR status here by Immigration officers,” McVay told Malay Mail.

“If I had brought my wife back to Canada, she would have been granted a PR within six months. It has been easier for foreign women that marry Malaysian men to obtain PR status.

“Previously the government announced different types of programmes for expats, but they didn’t work. I really hope that this does work. I will be very delighted,” he added.

Cyrus Daruwalla from India echoed McVay’s sentiments and said that the government was moving in the right direction.

“This will definitely encourage more expats to come to Malaysia but we shall have to wait and see how this is going to play out. I am still skeptical about the PR issue.”

Daruwalla has been living in Malaysia for 16 years after marrying a local woman.

“The government is making the right move and it shows more equality. This will help bring in expats,”
Daruwalla said.

Briton Bob Teasdale was equally thrilled with the announcement and said he would apply for PR status now that the rules have been eased.

“Asia is the way of the future and Malaysia is doing the right thing. The Malaysian government has had various programmes to encourage foreigners to move here and it has all been great, especially the Malaysia, My Second Home programme,” he said.

“I have family and friends who will be interested to move here if this programme is implemented. However, it is still easier to obtain PR status in Hong Kong and Singapore,” Teasdale said. Teasdale has been living in Malaysia for 16 years and is married with two children.

It wasn’t just my name the reporter got wrong. Not all of the quotes attributed to me in the article were my exact words, as far as I can remember anyway. To be fair, though, I sort of talked the guy’s ear off, which gave him a lot of quotes to work with but may have overwhelmed him a bit if he was jotting down notes instead of recording the conversation. When I realised afterwards that he had probably missed quite a bit of what I had said, I sent him an email with some quotes he could use. Here’s what I wrote:

My wife and I have been married since 2001, and we’ve lived in Malaysia since 2002. Since coming here I’ve had 17 visas, the longest being just short of two years. Getting those visas was frustrating enough, but what’s been even more frustrating is the fact that it’s incredibly difficult to get PR here. I have a number of friends who are married to Malaysians and they all face the same obstacles when it comes to dealing with the Immigration Dept. and trying to get PR. I know people who have been here for decades before finally getting PR. How many have given up and left, taking their Malaysian spouses away with them?

When the news about PR being extended to foreign husbands of Malaysian women came out in the last couple of days in relation to the 2010 budget, of course I was excited, but I haven’t really allowed myself to jump for joy yet, because I’ve been excited by promising announcements in the past only to be disappointed. For example, a couple of years ago the government announced that foreign spouses would be able to get five-year visas, but it turned out only those with five-year work contracts would be eligible. I don’t know anyone who has ever had a five-year employment contract, let alone a five-year visa.

If the government is serious about this latest initiative, then I will be very happy, and very grateful. Extension of PR to foreign spouses would be an acknowledgement that we are immigrants, not merely visitors as stated on our visas. We have strong ties to this country, with not only Malaysian spouses but in many cases Malaysian children as well. My wife and I have a three-year-old son, born and raised here, and another on the way. Getting PR here would certainly make it easier, not only for me but for my entire family, to enjoy life in Malaysia and to contribute in our own way to this country we all call home.

My written quotes didn’t quite make it into the article, but I suppose the reporter did get the gist of what I had told him, despite a few mistakes here and there. I wish he’d got my name right, though. I thought I had spelled it out pretty clearly. But hey, it’s not the first time: people get it wrong all the time in Canada too.

Meanwhile, the details of this new PR initiative are still scarce. I think the next step will be a call to the Immigration Department. Let’s see what they say.

My Kiwi pal Jake called me this evening to tell me he’d just read a very interesting article over at The Malaysian Insider. The article, with the promising title Budget 2010: Easy PR status for skilled expats, has even more promising information inside:

The government said today it will simplify the granting of permanent residence (PR) status to talented and skilled expatriates in a bid to drive the economy forward.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak also announced that visas will be automatically given to working family members within 14 days for those coming to work here, in addition to the extension of PR status to foreigners married to Malaysian women.

Tabling the 2010 Budget in Parliament here, Najib said during said the move is intended to accelerate technology transfers through the import of superior foreign skills and expertise.

This will contribute to the transformation of the country into a high-income nation, one of the major goals in Najib’s first Budget as prime minister.

There’s more, of course, but what I find especially interesting is, obviously, the bit about PR. Let’s look at that again, shall we?

[...] the extension of PR status to foreigners married to Malaysian women.

Now, with the way things tend to go here in Malaysia, I can’t bring myself to jump up and down with delight, despite the ‘wow, great news’ feeling such words should provoke in me.

But if it is indeed true…wow, great news!

Yesterday, after at least a dozen trips to the Immigration Dept. in Shah Alam this year, I finally got my new Malaysian visa. So what kind of visa can you get when you’re married to a Malaysian and have been here for about seven years? A six-month ‘Social Visit Pass’. Why only six months? Because this was my first time. Huh?

Early this year, with my 22-month visa ready to expire (not sure why they couldn’t just make it an even two years but it was the longest visa they ever gave me so I tried not to complain about that), Leen and I once again began the process of preparing documents so I could get a new visa. This time, however, there was all sorts of confusion thrown in — well, there’s always confusion, but this time there was plenty more. We found out the Spouse Programme had been discontinued; it took us a few visits to the Immigration Dept. to find out what type of visa I would take its place. Unfortunately it also took some time and a few pointless visits to the wrong places and a couple of phone calls just to figure out which Immigration Dept. we were supposed to go to. Previously we had gone to Putrajaya, but when I went there this time I was told only people from China could do their visas in Putrajaya now. I went to Pusat Bandar Damansara, but after taking the forms home I noticed a line at the bottom of the checklist saying that only people with Kuala Lumpur addresses would be dealt with. We made some phone calls and were told we would have to go to Shah Alam because Leen’s I/C has a Selangor address (I’m quite glad, in hindsight, that her I/C doesn’t have a Johor address on it). So finally we went to Shah Alam and were given a new checklist, which for some reason was slightly different from the one we had been given in KL. Then we set about preparing the items on the checklist, which included several items the Immigration Dept. already had multiple copies of, such as wedding photos and our marriage certificates. This time we also had to provide family photos, supposedly to prove Al is actually our son (because his birth certificate apparently isn’t proof enough). Finally we submitted exactly 100 pages of documents to the Immigration Dept. and waited for my visa to be approved. In the meantime, they gave me a one-month ‘Special Pass’. And so we waited.

When the month was up, I had to get another Special Pass because my visa still hadn’t been approved for some reason. At the end of another month I was told the same thing; since the maximum number of consecutive Special Passes someone can get is two, I was issued a generic three-month Social Visit Pass. Around that time we were also told why it was taking so long for my visa approval: the Immigration Dept. was still waiting for confirmation from the National Registration Dept. that our marriage was indeed valid. A letter from the NRD, we were told, could clear things up quickly; we were advised to go to the NRD to clear the matter up ourselves if we wanted it done before the expiry of my three-month pass.

So one day not long ago we went to the National Registration Dept. headquarters in Putrajaya and explained our situation to a couple of desk officers, who seemed as confused as we were. Finally we were able to speak to someone a bit higher up the chain of command, who shed some light on the problem, which turned out to be the result of someone at the Canadian High Commission in Ottawa not knowing what they were doing.

After Leen and I got married in 2001, we were told we would have to register our marriage with the Malaysian government within six months or face stiff penalties. We registered with the Malaysian High Commission in Ottawa, a process that involved quite a bit of paperwork; in the end we were issued a document showing that we had registered our marriage and that everything was in order. However, when we returned to Malaysia we were hauled in front of a judge for not registering our marriage in time. It was then we discovered that when the government said they wanted us to register our marriage within six months, they meant they wanted us to come to Malaysia to register with the Jabatan Agama in Muar. Who knew?

Still, when the Immigration Dept. wanted our documents for my visa, we gave them everything, including the seemingly worthless certificate from the High Commission in Ottawa. For several years, no one at the Immigration Dept. said anything about that particular certificate. Then, for some reason, just this year someone at the Immigration Dept. took notice of it and decided to contact the National Registration Dept. to verify the validity of our marriage (because the copies of our marriage certificates from Nova Scotia and Johor, plus the declaration in front of a Commissioner of Oaths that we do for every one of my visas, were apparently not sufficient).

Fast-forward to Leen and me standing there at the National Registration Dept., listening to an official there telling us that the Immigration Dept. shouldn’t have contacted them at all, because Muslim marriages are never registered with the NRD; he also told us the High Commission shouldn’t have issued that certificate to us in the first place, because they’re only issued to Malaysians who are not Muslims. He said the folks at the NRD were beginning to get tired of Muslims showing up there because a Malaysian High Commission somewhere had incorrectly issued them similar certificates. He said the Malaysian High Commission in Australia makes that screw-up even more often than the one in Canada, putting Malaysian Muslims and their Australian spouses through an annoying bureaucratic process that leaves them with a worthless document and puts them at risk of being fined or even jailed upon their return to Australia. I wonder how many other Malaysian High Commissions around the world are doing this, and, more importantly, why.

Anyway, the other day I went back to Shah Alam and was given a form for another Special Pass and was told to photocopy my passport, Leen’s I/C, and our Johor marriage certificate. When my number was called, another officer scolded me for not copying the additional pages of our marriage certificate (we’d never had to provide them before as they’re useless) and also for the fact that Leen wasn’t there with me (even though I was applying for a Special Pass, for which she wouldn’t have to be present). I gave him a letter the NRD had given us (it was sealed but I’m sure it probably said something like PLEASE STOP ASKING US TO VERIFY MUSLIM MARRIAGES); when he got my file he said, “Oh, you don’t need to apply for the Special Pass. Your visa has been approved.”

Hey, I thought, things are looking up! Sure, I’d just wasted time filling out the Special Pass form and getting photocopies of things I didn’t need. But if I could leave that day with my new visa, what the heck! “So how long is this visa for?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“Six months,” he said, “because this is your first visa. Next time you can get one year; maybe after that you can get two years.”

My first visa. They’d been telling me that throughout the process this time around, but even after hearing it several times I had to shake my head. Basically, because they scrapped the Spouse Programme and created a new one, which is pretty much the same but called something different, my previous visas no longer count. For the record, this new visa is actually my 17th in just under seven years.

Still, it was shaping up to be a pretty good day. At least my six-month “first-time” visa was ready. The officer asked if I’d like to pay that day, and I replied that I would. He asked if I’d like to pay cash and I thought, Hey, look at that…before I could only pay by bank draft. Maybe this is a good day after all! So I said yes.

“Ok,” he said, “that will be ninety ringgit for the visa…”

“Of course,” I said, reaching for my wallet.

“…and two thousand ringgit for the security bond.”

Cue the sound of a needle scratching across a record.

“Wait,” I said. “We’ve never actually had to pay a security bond. Why do we suddenly have to pay it now?”

“Because this is your first visa,” he said. “You can get the money back when you get PR.”

Great, I thought. Whenever that is.

Needless to say, I didn’t have two grand in my wallet and would have to go back later (after much hand-wringing and some frantic calls and messages). After I’d walked out I decided to go back. I had another question.

“Can I just apply for PR now?” I asked another officer, one who has dealt with us several times and is moderately friendly.

“No,” he said. “You don’t qualify.”

“Well when can someone like me qualify for PR?”

He looked at the ceiling like he was really searching the air for the right answers. “Six years,” he said.

Well that’s better than ten, I thought. After all, I’ve already been here for…

“Starting today,” he said.

“But why? I’ve been…”

“Because,” he said, “this is your first visa.”

And so it goes. Yesterday I went back and paid, a simple act which took most of the day. Now I can breathe easy, for a while anyway. This visa is good until 12 February 2010; since renewals are supposed to be set in motion three months before a visa expires, I’ll be back at the Immigration Dept. sometime in November. Hopefully I can get a year on my next visa, my 18th…or, as they will call it, my second.