'Mismah came to Malaysia as a labourer in 1982 and gets permanent residency within the same year. Can Immigration shed more light on this?'

Mismah: Why do they say such things about me?

Lynn : Can someone explain how a blue collar worker from Indonesia can qualify for permanent resident (PR) and subsequently, citizenship?

I know an Australian citizen who married a Malaysian and has been living here for 40 years, who is still denied citizenship year in, year out.

Not only are we scraping the bottom of the barrel here, our priorities are really warped. It would appear that we are granting citizenship based on who is the least qualified and contributes least to spurring our country to being a developed nation.

And the beauty of it is these Indonesians are treated as bumiputeras while my family who is fourth generation Malaysian and my husband's who is a 10th generation Malaysian are second-class citizens. And you wonder why we are so frustrated all the time.

YellowBoxer: It is an irony that it is so much easier for an Indonesian cleaner to get citizenship than professional spouses of Malaysians (who had migrated here with their husbands/wives).

It looks like we welcome unskilled workers more than highly trained professionals. Why? Because the former can be made to support BN at elections, while the latter can decide for himself/herself which party to vote upon obtaining citizenship.

Yes, we prefer people who can be easily bought over than people who can think critically.

TehTarik : Mismah came to Malaysia as a labourer in 1982 and was granted permanent residency within the same year. Thousands of foreign wives of Malaysian citizens in the 1980s and 1990s had to wait for years before they were granted permanent residency.

Maybe the Immigration Department can shed light on these discriminatory policies? A foreign worker on a work permit appears to get preference over the foreign wife of a Malaysian citizen.

Black Mamba : China national Han Jiang, the ex-national badminton coach for Malaysia, had difficulty getting citizenship but an Indonesian casual labourer like Mismah can be granted citizenship.

I once met an Indonesian cobbler on the five-foot way of a shop in Kuala Lumpur, who told me he got his red identity card without much hassle and subsequently got his citizenship in a matter of years. What's the value-added to the country?

Fairplayer : Which thief would admit to a crime unless caught red-handed? Which child would admit to stealing cookies unless caught with his hand stuck in the cookie jar? Which liar would admit to telling lies? Worse, some are already proven, still they deny it.

Kgen: The Sinar Harian story initially reported an interview with a woman whose face was digitally blurred and no indication of where she is staying. Now that her face has been revealed and other reporters have access to her - at least we know that Mismah exist.

We should ask this question - is her citizenship approval connected to the coming general election? It is odd for new citizens to rush to register themselves as voters when many Malaysians don't even bother.

There are tens of thousands of Chinese and Indians who are deemed stateless because of missing identification papers. They have lived here longer than Mismah and there is no doubt they are Malaysians. They speak the local dialect, attended local schools and have family and relatives here.

Only the NRD makes life difficult for them by refusing to recognise them as Malaysians. However, Indonesian labourers can get PR and citizenship much easier than real non-Muslim Malaysians.

Hello : Selangor Umno's deputy liaison chief Noh Omar, and for that matter MCA, MIC (who claims to represent the Chinese and Indians), what about seeking justice for the hundreds of thousands of people born in Malaysia, some for generations, who have not received citizenship?

There are also cases where the children born of these unfortunates being denied birth certificates, where is the justice for them?

Anak Malaysia: Hear this real life testimony. My uncle recently interviewed someone clearly Indonesian (he couldn't speak proper Bahasa Malaysia) who applied for a job at my uncle's company. He mentioned that he had been in this country for nine years and admitted that two years ago he had been given citizenship.

My uncle saw his MyKad and asked whether the citizenship was given with a condition. The Malaysian of Indonesian origin then asked my uncle if he supported BN, to which my uncle nodded affirmatively.

Then this Malaysian of Indonesian origin said, "Yes, I was told I must vote BN as a condition of citizenship."

Tkc: Whether Mismah qualified to be a citizen of Malaysia or to be a voter is for NRD and EC to clarify respectively.

Do you think there is something fishy when Selangor Umno deputy chief Noh Omar took it upon himself to defend Mismah's status - at her home no less? What has citizenship or voter rights got to do with political parties unless all the allegations about ‘votes-for-citizenship' are actually true?

Meritocracy: There are another couple of million Mismahs out there. What's so surprising?

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