Alienated in a Neighbor's Land: How One Blank Box on an Immigration Form Erases 30 Years of a Child's Life
The true story of undocumented immigrant children in Malaysia over 30 years. The struggle for identity, education and human rights is tragically lost.
Alienated in a Neighbor's Land: How One Blank Box on an Immigration Form Erases 30 Years of a Child's Life
Some lives are shaped by war, poverty, or disaster. Ahmad's life was shaped by a clerical decision made when he was seven years old — a decision about which box to tick on an immigration form. That single administrative gap would go on to deny him an education, a legal identity, a marriage, and, for years at a time, the ability to simply live in the same country as his own parents. This is his story, told here in full for the first time, alongside the Malaysian laws and policies that made it possible. A Family Crosses the Strait, 1989 In April 1989, during the month of Ramadan, a young couple from Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia, made a decision that would shape the next four decades of their family's life. Abdullah and his wife Marlina, both from a lower-middle-class background, gathered their young son — call him Ahmad, then about eight years old — and his two younger sisters, and crossed illegally into Malaysia in search of work. They were far from alone. By the late 1980s, In…
