MORE non-Muslim Malaysian men are marrying foreigners, especially those from Indonesia, China, Thailand and Vietnam.
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Tan: ‘Maybe foreign women are less demanding’ | Deputy Home Minister Datuk Tan Chai Ho said the number of foreign marriages had gone up from 3,953 in 2000 to 7,277 last year.
“Our statistics show that non-Muslim Malaysian men marrying foreigners are on the rise. We have to ask them why they prefer foreigners,” he told reporters at the Parliament lobby.
Tan said the number of such marriages had increased consistently with 3,953 in 2000, 4,085 in 2001, 4,847 in 2002, 5,123 in 2003, 5,701 in 2004 and 7,277 last year.
From January this year until June, he said there were 3,009 men who got hitched with foreigners, bringing the total number of such marriages to 33,995 between 2000 and June 2006.
As for non-Muslim Malaysian women marrying foreigners, Tan said there were fewer such cases occurring.
He said there were 1,464 such marriages last year compared with 2,210 in 2001, a reduction of 33.8%.
Asked the reasons for the trend among local men, he said: “It is difficult to explain why people fall in love. Maybe foreign women are less demanding than local women.”
Tan said the Immigration Department was checking 10 such marriages to see whether they were genuine or marriages of convenience.
“One case involves a 25-year-old foreigner and a 70-year-old man.
“We cannot say the marriage is not valid. There has not been any complaint that it could be a marriage of convenience,” he said, adding that the foreign spouse would use the marriage certificate to apply for their yearly visa.
Earlier in the House, Fong Po Kuan (DAP - Batu Gajah) cast doubt on the marriages involving local men and foreign women.
“There are so many of them marrying foreign women. People claimed some foreign women who married local men are involved in social ills,” she said.
Tan said it was hard to determine whether such marriages were genuine or not. “How do you tell if two people are in love?”
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