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Its deputy minister Datuk Tan Chai Ho said they should never seek the services of middlemen who could be members of syndicates, which preyed on Mlaysians seeking foreign wives.
He said the authorities has identified one such syndicate, which issued fake marriage certificates to married couples and the marriages were also not recorded with the department.
"We have warned Malaysian men who wanted to marry foreign women to go personally to the department to register their marriage.
"This way their children will have Malaysian birth certificates and will be regarded as Malaysians," he said after attending a gathering here on Wednesday night.
Tan said those who married through the middlemen - and later found their children could not apply for birth certificates - could apply to adopt the children.
He said through this way the children would be given permanent residence status while at the same time the couples could apply for marriage certificates from the department.
He said unless the fathers adopted the children, the children would be named after their mothers and would have the same citizenship as that of their mothers.
By HAMDAN RAJA ABDULLAH
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