I am a Malaysian who has been working in the United States on a H1B (work) visa for about five years, and am writing to express my alarm at a recent development as a result of the new technology used to create our passports.

If my perception of the situation is correct, Malaysians in the US may be put in a situation where they have no travel document available to prove that they traveled to the States legally.

My story begins when in January, I looked in my passport and discovered that I had until the end of that month before it expired...

Jan 20, 2004

I searched the Internet for 'Malaysian passport renewal' and was delighted to see that we had joined the information age, and that PDF forms and instructions were available for download. I filled out the forms, attached my photographs, notarised copies of my ID and birth certificate, and went to the post office and got a postal order.

I mailed it that same day with priority mail and (fortunately) requested for a return receipt.

Jan 25, 2004

I received the return receipt with a signature, and proof that someone had signed for the package on Jan 23.

Feb 13, 2004

I called the Malaysia embassy number from the instruction sheet and got an automatic response giving me a new phone number to call. I called the new number and was routed to a person named Mano when I requested the passport renewal department. Mano said that he couldn't find my passport anywhere. He asked where I had sent the package, and when I told him the address, he said that was the old address.

This upset me, and when I told him I had obtained the address from the website , he said that was not their website and that he could not be responsible. The embassy itself did not have any website. And when I said "so you mean that my passport is probably floating around somewhere?" he said yes. I thanked him and attempted to contact the post office.

I found the number for the post office in Washington DC and spoke with the person in charge of delivery, and she verified that the package with the tracking number I gave her had been forwarded to the new address of the embassy and had been signed for by one R Lim.

I called back to the embassy and gave Mano this information and was put on hold. He later told me that R Lim was their receptionist and that she had signed for it, and that my passport was probably with his boss, who would be on leave until the week after. I thanked him and said I would call back.

Feb 17, 2004

I spoke with Mano and he verified that they had received my passport, but that my passport could not be renewed, and that I would have to apply for a new passport. He said he would send me the new forms. I asked if the forms could be emailed to me, and he said they had to be "original". (Note: I had renewed a previous passport at another time years ago using printed PDFs with no problem.)

He then also warned me it would be a six-month process, which shocked me. My brother had renewed his passport by mail around 2000-2001 and received it within two months. He then explained that the application had to be sent back to Malaysia as the embassy didn't have the ability to produce the new passports with chips.

He asked if I wished to continue the process and I said of course - I have no alternative - my passport had expired. I asked if I would get my old passport back in the meantime and he said no, the embassy would be hanging on to it while the new passport was being processed. I asked him what I would use as identification and he suggested the US drivers' licence. "So I'm basically not going to have a passport on me for six months?" And he said yes.

After I hung up, I thought about having my family do the application for me instead - maybe that would be faster. I called back and asked if the receptionist could route me to the supervisor of the passport department. She said that my family wouldn't be able to do that for me because thumb prints are required. I asked how the embassy route was different - she said that I would be able to put my thumb prints on the forms they sent me.

She explained that this new process had been in place for about a year and had taken people by surprise. I would not be the only one to be stranded without a travel document for over six months. The Malaysian embassy receives about 20 passport applications a day in the DC branch alone. According to her, some passports have been in process for eight months and are still pending.

This implies that hundreds of Malaysians are technically stranded with no passports in the US, where foreigners stand at risk of being detained or hassled because of the post-911 climate. I'm also wondering if I've been foiled from returning home in spite of Article 9(1) of our beloved federal constitution that gives me a right to do so.