Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku (STAR) president Jeffrey Kitingan said many native Sabahans, particularly those living in remote locations, lack personal documentation due to the difficulty of travelling to towns to register their births.
However, migrants without valid documents should be treated according to the law, they should be “nabbed, charged in the court of law, and deported”, he said in response to an announcement by home minister Hamzah Zainudin that the government is considering a proposal by the Sabah government to provide identity cards to foreign nationals in the state.
Kitingan said that local people, unlike undocumented migrants, could verify their ancestry and should be awarded the proper documents and given citizenship.
“Why should foreigners be given special treatment (when) they break our immigration laws and commit crimes by illegally entering our country?” he said. “Giving them identification documents will not prevent future problems. Nor will it guarantee these people will not commit the same crime again. It does not solve anything.”
Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) vice-president Gee Tien Siong said the state government should instead focus on implementing the Sabah identity card, meant only for Sabahans, which would strengthen and guarantee the rights of Sabahans under the Malaysia Agreement 1963.
“The Sabah IC is the only solution to solve the state’s undocumented migrants problem, the issue of dubious citizenship and phantom voters created though the notorious Projek IC,” he said, in a statement.
Projek IC is a term used to describe the alleged systematic granting of citizenship to migrants by giving them identification cards in the 1990s.
“Many indigenous people in Sabah still do not have their names in the National Registration Department (JPN) records. So, they need the Sabah IC, too.
“Why are we focusing on undocumented migrants when so many Malaysians in Sabah are being neglected?” Gee asked.
Earlier today, chief minister Hajiji Noor said the document mentioned by Hamzah was actually the “kad warga asing” (foreigner card).
Hajiji said this was merely a recommendation to be further deliberated by the Sabah government before a final decision is made. He added the proposal does not involve giving foreigners documents which will later be an avenue to grant them citizenship.
He said this card has been proposed to be a standard document to replace the IMM13 refugee cards, kad burung-burung and census certificates, which are identification documents previously issued to migrants and legal foreign workers in Sabah.
Another proposal, he said, involves the “kad pekerja warga asing” (foreign worker card) which is meant to be issued to all foreign workers in the various sectors in the state.