Oppose Sabah Temporary Pass, urges MCA Sabah leader
KOTA KINABALU: Sabahans have been urged to oppose the Sabah Temporary Pass (STP) Card which seeks to legalise the illegal stayers as legal, especially at a time when the continued applicability of the IMM13 document has become suspect, as the refugee status of those for whom the IMM13 was issued has long lapsed.
MCA Sabah Women Movement chief Dr Pamela Yong in making the call, opined that the state government’s insistence that the STP was primarily intended to make regulating or monitoring the foreigners easier does not hold water.
Dr Pamela was commenting on the announcement that a special pass will be issued to as a standardized one, to illegal immigrants in Sabah. This is supposedly meant to better regulate and monitor the State’s illegal immigrants.
She said that the STP is set to replace the official and legally recognised IMM13 (Immigration passes) issued to Filipino refugees who fled to Sabah in the 1970s, as well as the ‘Kad Burung-Burung’ issued by the state in the 1980s, in addition to other documents, some by the federal government.
The legality of some of these documents are questionable, she pointed out.
She stressed that the Kad Burung Burung and the Sijil Banci never accorded these migrants any legal status, unlike the IMM13.
“These cards (Kad Burung Burung and the Sijil Banci) were issued by the State merely as a notification that they have been registered or recorded for purposes of survey and census,” she stressed.
According to Dr Pamela, it was just an acknowledgement that they have been recorded in the government’s data base. These documents do not confer any legal status by the state authority or the Immigration Department.
“The most abhorrent of it all is that the STP cards seek to make these acknowledgement cards valid identification documents allowing them safe passage to stay in the state indefinitely. They (those with such cards - burung2 / bancian) should by right be deported in due course.
“And it also begs the question, why these IMM13 refugees and other illegal foreigners with their unrecognized documents are not sent back to their country of origin? The civil war in the Philippines is long over and the Philippines government has also announced that they have no issues welcoming their people back,” she pointed out.
She is of the opinion that the state government’s insistence that the STP was primarily intended to make regulating or monitoring the foreigners easier does not hold water.
“I find it rather paradoxical that Malaysians from the Peninsular are only eligible for a 90-day visitor’s pass or at best a one-year work pass to stay in Sabah but under STP these illegal immigrants are allowed to have renewable three-year passes instead.
“Why such a privilege to nonMalaysians compared to our very own legitimate fellow Malaysians? The last thing any Sabahan would want to do is to give a legal standing to the many illegal immigrants in Sabah,” she said.
Warisan leaders have also justified the issuance of the STP card to avoid over-crowding the ‘Rumah Merah’ while waiting for their country of origin to accept them back which is absurd, claimed Dr Pamela.