3.3.2 Acquisition of nationality by registration The second pathway is citizenship by registration whereby persons can put in an application for citizenship to the government, under these four Articles in the Federal Constitution which are outlined in Table 8. Citizenship by registration is non-automatic and discretionary, as an applicant may not automatically qualify for citizenship. Under Article 15, a non-Malaysian wife of a Malaysian citizen can apply for citizenship provided these requirements are met: she has resided in the Federation for two years, she intends to reside permanently in Malaysia, she is of good character, she renounces any foreign nationality, and the marriage is still in force. These stricter requirements were newly introduced by the Constitution (Amendment) Act 1962, which meant that applicants needed to prove a genuine attachment to the country in order to qualify for citizenship (Low, 2017). There are currently no provisions for a non-Malaysian husband of a Malaysian citizen to apply for citizenship by registration, so naturalisation is the only pathway available for nonMalaysian husbands to acquire Malaysian citizenship. Article 15A can be seen as a safeguard mechanism for children who don’t qualify for citizenship by operation of law (i.e. foundlings, adopted children, children born out of wedlock, children born abroad to a Malaysian mother), as it is open to children and persons below the age of 21 (Liew, 2019). However, in reality, very few applications via this pathway have been successful due to the arbitrary and uncertain nature of the process. Compared to the other provisions on citizenship by registration, Article 15A is the only provision that does not specify the requirements to qualify for citizenship. The phrase “special circumstances” is not legally or procedurally defined and there is no reference made to the parents’ nationality status and the legal status of their marriage. In addition to this uncertainty on the requirements, this remedy gives the Home Minister wide discretionary powers to approve or reject citizenship applications without any reason given to the applicant. This arbitrary process results in long timeframes for applications to be processed and is a barrier towards stateless applicants acquiring citizenship (Rodziana Mohamed Razali, 2017) – this is further discussed in Section 5.3. 57