Homegrown Statelessness in Malaysia Government has acknowledged the existence of this stateless population having launched the Malaysian Indian Blueprint. 71 While many of the documented cases are of Indian Tamils in Malaysia, there is a population of Filipinos and Indonesians in Sabah who work in the forestry and palm oil plantations that came during pre-independence that may be eligible for citizenship. 72 There has been little mapping or extensive effort to identify the extent of the problem of statelessness in this population. 73 This provides an important research and advocacy opportunity. Cases of those having long-standing habitual residence in Malaysia arose in my interviews. For example, 2S is a 33-year-old who is a stateless descendant of plantation workers. 2S is stateless because her mother is also stateless, despite the fact 2S’s mother was a citizen during colonial times. 2S indicated that after Malaysia became independent, her mother did not go to the National Registration Department to obtain her identification card detailing her Malaysian citizenship. 2S reasoned that her mother did not bother because she did not have her birth certificate. While 2S’s father was also a Malaysian citizen, her parent’s marriage was not registered because 2S’s mother didn’t have an identity card and therefore could not register the marriage. The lack of registration meant that 2S could not benefit from acquiring citizenship from her father since she was a child born out of wedlock. 2S has applied for citizenship four times with the last attempt in 2017 and her application is still pending. 74 2 Persons Not Living on Plantations During Colonial Times and Their Descendants The interviews revealed stories of persons and families rendered administratively stateless mainly because they did not register or apply for the appropriate documentation after Merdeka Day or Malaysia Day. Some stories included persons who did not live in plantations. One NGO provided details of a story about a 70-year Chinese man who was in immigration detention and stateless despite efforts on both the NGO and government to verify the man’s identity. 75 The man’s fingerprints were not in any government system and there were no records of his existence. A newspaper advertisement was taken out to find any person who could verify the man’s identity but no one responded. While the man has been released from detention, he has not been able to obtain the proper paperwork to verify his identity or acquire citizenship. 76 71 72 73 74 75 76 See Razali (n 1) 5, citing Barisan Nasional, Malaysian Indian Blueprint (Policy Report, 2018). Appendix Table 3, Interview with 1PhD; Ruben Sario, ‘Small Filipino community makes big impact on Sabah’s landscape’ The Star (16 September 2017) <https://www.thestar.com.my/metro/metro-news/2017/09/16/small-filipino-communitymakes-big-impact-on-sabahs-landscape/>; Appendix Table 3, Interview with 2A; Appendix Table 3, Interview with 13NGO. There has been some research. See, eg, Greg Acciaioli, Helen Brunt and Julian Clifton, ‘Foreigners Everywhere, Nationals Nowhere: Exclusion, Irregularity, and Invisibility of Stateless Bajau Laut in Eastern Sabah, Malaysia’ (2017) 15(3) Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 232. Appendix Table 2, Interview with 2S. Appendix Table 3, Interview with 3NGO. ibid. 109