Note the following facts and figures from that report:
1. Deputy Home Minister Datuk Wira Abu Seman Yusop said a total of 29,667 applications have been submitted to the department since 2007, and of these, some 4,000 were pending a decision.
He said that the department has set a benchmark of settling the remaining 4,000 applications by the end of this year.
2, He said a special task force set up by ministry, comprising 60 officers, helped resolved a backlog of 32,927 applications from 1997 to 2006.
3. Some 15,000 applications were received by the department as of October this year, which will be processed by 2011, he added.
To sum up:
1997 to 2006 (ten years inclusive) : a backlog of 32 927 applications
2007 to 2010 : 29, 667 applications in three years
2010 (as of October 2010) : 15 000 applications
4. Abu Seman said there was an increase in the number of citizenship applications in recent years, mainly from those from neighbouring countries, due to Malaysia's stability and economic growth.
Is it realistic to make such a statement? What he said does not seem to jell with the following facts and figures from The Malaysian Insider HERE :
1. About 700,000 Malaysians are currently living abroad, with half of them in Singapore, while the rest can be found mostly in Australia, Britain and the United States.
2. An Australian immigration agency in Perth with offices in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor has reportedly said that the number of Malaysians enquiring about moving to Australia had spiked by 80 per cent since 2008.
3. Many Malaysians living abroad, however, have reportedly cited racial tension and affirmative action policies among their concerns about returning to their homeland.
If that is the case, why would 15 000 people from neighbouring countries want to apply to be a Malaysian citizen when:
a) there is reluctance to change some affirmative action policies to enable meritocracy to lure the diaspora to return
b) About 80 per cent of the country’s workforce has only secondary school education thereby leading to the lack of skilled labour in Malaysia which deters more high-technology industries from coming to Malaysia.
c) London School of Economics and Political Science economics professor Danny Quah had pointed out that brain drain has had a huge impact on Malaysia’s economic and industrial development for the past decade or longer.
d) Malaysia’s growth rate dropped to an average of 5.5 per cent a year from 2000 to 2008, from an average of about 9 per cent a year from 1991 to 1997.
e) The country is also facing uncertain economic prospects with average GDP growth in the next five years projected to be just shy of the six per cent target Najib had set.
f) Foreign direct investment plunged a record 81 per cent last year and the World Bank has warned that a lack of human capital is a “critical constraint in Malaysia’s ambition to become a high-income economy.”
g) The number of Malaysian migrants rose by more than 100-fold in a 45-year period, from 9,576 Malaysians in 1960 to 1,489,168 Malaysians in 2005, according to the World Bank.
h) Malaysian migrants with tertiary education living in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, numbered at 102,321 in the year 2000.
i) Deputy Foreign Minister Senator A. Kohilan Pillay said recently that 304,358 Malaysians had migrated from March 2008 till August 2009 compared with 139,696 Malaysians in 2007.
That is an increase of 217.87%!!!
If the outlook is really rosy, why would 304, 358 Malaysians have migrated from March '08 till August '09????
Why would those 15 000 people apply on the basis of Malaysia's stability and economic growth which are being questioned by MANY quarters?
So something does not sound right, does it? The pieces of the puzzle just do not fall into place at all!
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Updated @ 12.05 am, October 6th
I did more sleuthing and discovered a few interesting facts:
Look at the birth rate of Malaysia as taken from THIS LINK.
Check out the death rate of Malaysia AT THIS LINK.
The population growth rate of Malaysia can be seen HERE.
Net migration rate is available for 178 countries at THIS LINK but not for Malaysia. Mind you - the source of information is the CIA World Factbook.
THIS SITE confirms that net migration rate for Malaysia is NOT AVAILABLE.
Why?
Strangely, this site shows that the population trend in Malaysia in on an increasing trend and is slightly over 27 million in 2008.
Compare this chart with the tables in the earlier links. Judge for yourself. I am sure the statistics are available but how come the net migration rate is unavailable and hho come the population pattern is on the increase in the light of the statistics for birth rate, death rate and the absence of net migration rate for the country?
Just who are leaving and WHO ARE COMING IN???? Can someone kindly explain the demographic pattern??
Check out the statistics shown AT THIS SITE which is the Department of Statistics of Malaysia which tells us that the population of Malaysia in 2010 is 28.25 whilst it was 27.9 in 2009.
Anonymous "mainly from neighbouring countries?" Its a no BRAINER!!!!!! Hahaha, mainly from Singapore!!!!!!