Harrassment and Discrimination of Foreign Spouses in Govt. Offices:

​

Talking about harassment and deliberate discrimination towards non-citizens in Malaysia.

This is what happened to a female foreign spouse recently in JPN office recently.

===========================================================================================

Even as the CRC Review was in progress, let me share my extremely troubling experience with JPN that illustrates systemic incompetence that we the general public have to endure. I had gone to JPN on Monday 19th Jan 2026 on work, to help a family submit a citizenship application, thankfully we were able to make a submission from a Malaysian mother with 2 adult children, then I realised my own, over 3 decades marriage cert was not in digital copy and in poor condition and also decided to get my sons Birth Registration, which was a handwritten one, into a digitalised copy. Despite correctly completing the application from for my son’s birth registration and clearly indicating his Malaysian IC number, JPN Putrajaya unilaterally classified him as bukan warganegara which I think is solely based on my Red IC aka foreign status. The marriage registration copy had no problem,

As I was on a call at the counter, I placed the birth certificate in my bag without checking it, I returned home, I realised that in the flip of a photocopy, my son was stripped of his Malaysian citizenship and became bukan warganegara, bear in mind that he is a 30-year-old adult. When I returned on Friday, 23 January to request correction of their error, JPN officers demanded statutory declarations from my husband and children to “prove” they are Malaysian and a whole lot of other documents, despite the mistake being entirely theirs with no acknowledgement nor was there an apology.

I refused to comply with this unreasonable demand and stated clearly that I would escalate the matter to senior officials at JPN and KDN. Only then did officers scramble and refer me to two pengarahs. Even at that stage, they refused to admit fault and said I did not show them my marriage cert, which they did not even ask, instead imposed a 14-day waiting period to rectify their own mistake.

This is not a minor administrative error. It is a reflection of a disturbing lack of accountability, that citizenship is based on the mother’s status, and practices which border on administrative incompetence or is it abuse? Families should not be required to submit additional declarations or endure delays to correct serious errors caused by the authorities themselves. For this reason, I decided to write out this experience and why it’s necessary that clear complaint mechanisms, accountability, and oversight are urgently needed within the Malaysian administration.

​

A disheartened foreign spouse,KL