A large amount of Malaysians have opted to call another country home after renouncing their citizenship, a study by the National Registration Department (JPN) has found.
Among the top countries that were selected as their new “home” included Singapore, Australia, and Brunei.
Majority choosing S’pore
In an interview with Harian Metro, JPN director-general Datuk Badrul Hisham Alias said a total of 61,116 Malaysians gave up their citizenship over the course of five years.
He revealed that women made up the majority of the figure and said around 10,000 Malaysians renounce their citizenship each year on average.
Out of those who gave up their Malaysian citizenship, 93.78% applied for Singaporean citizenship, 2.15% for Australian citizenship, and 0.97% for Bruneian citizenship.
The remaining 3.1% were made up of other countries not stated explicitly.
Economic & family factors the main drivers
Badrul said the the reason why so many Malaysians opt to bid farewell to their citizenship was mostly driven by economic and family factors.
In the case of Singapore, many Malaysians are employed there, and employment prospects and income levels make it easier for them to obtain citizenship.
“There are also Malaysians who have a foreign spouse and migrated overseas before opting to take up their spouse’s nationality,” he explained.
Badrul added there were also cases which involved the revocation of citizenship, which occurs when one acquires foreign citizenship and exercises the privileges of that nationality, such as voting.
This is because Malaysia does not recognise dual citizenship under the Federal Constitution and must revoke the Malaysian citizenship immediately if that occurs.
19,287 Malaysians aged 31 and 40 made up the largest portion of those applying to renounce citizenship (31.6%), followed by 18,827 applicants aged 21 to 30 (30.8%), 14,126 applicants aged 41 to 50 (23.1%), and 8,876 applicants aged above 50 (14.5%).
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