Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s proposal to issue birth certificates to stateless children in Sabah to give them education opportunities, has received strong objections from the State Reform Party (Star Sabah) and Sabah PKR.

Star Sabah chief Jeffrey Kitingan said: “We strongly object to their issuance to children of illegal immigrants”.

 The Bingkor assemblyperson said in a statement that given the dark history of illegal immigrants and foreigners being granted Malaysian IDs for political expediency, it is hardly surprising that Sabahans do not feel comfortable with the home minister’s proposal.

 “It is a lame and unacceptable excuse that the birth certificates should be given so that they can attend school. It is nothing more than a disguise to eventually giving them ICs, citizenship and the right to vote,” Jeffrey opined.

He suggested that if at all birth certificates were to be issued to the offspring of illegal immigrants, they should be differentiated by colour codes or identity codes  to classify them as non-Malaysians. 

 “Sabah, Sarawak and the federal government should establish a task force under the Inter-governmental committee to review the system, procedures and format of birth certificates for foreigners, especially in the Borneo states,” said Jeffrey.

He said that the Sabah government needed to safeguard the rights and interests of Sabahans and needed to stand up to the federal government and stop their treasonous acts before it was too late.

Meanwhile, Penampang MP and PKR vice- president Darell Leiking ( right ) warned that it would be disastrous for Sabah to issue birth certificates to these stateless children so as to give them educational opportunities on ‘humane’ grounds.

“We have seen how disastrous it has been for Sabah when under ‘humane’ reasons tens of thousands of refugees from the Philippine crisis of the 70s were issued with the IMM13,” he said.

The document allows them move, stay, study and work in Sabah and the government had admitted sometime in 2011, that 81,000 IMM13 were issued.

 “We cannot deny the feelings and suspicions of many genuine Sabahans that these have been abused by many immigrants to eventually obtain citizenship. This is on top of the much abhorred Project IC in Sabah,” he had said in Parliament.

Leiking added that he could not help but express the fear and concern of the genuine people of Sabah that another around of demographic engineering would take place with this new proposal to issue birth certificates to stateless children.