ICA does not assign a person's race

Today Online
7 Jan 2010

Letter from Chia Hui Keng, Head, Public & Internal Communications Branch, Corporate Communications Division, Immigration & Checkpoints Authority

We refer to "It will be quite a race" (Online, Dec 31) from Mr Michael Loh.

On Dec 28, 2009, the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) announced that parents are required to declare the race of their new born child on the Birth Report Form with effect from 2 January 2010.

The introduction of this requirement offers parents of inter-racial marriages the flexibility and choice to decide and declare their child's race upon birth registration. The ICA would like to clarify that it does not assign a person's race but only records the information as declared that is reasonably believed to be factual.

Parents of mixed race marriages will now have the option to decide if the child should follow the race of the father, mother or an acceptable mixed race in our record. The information will be recorded provisionally until the child turns 15 years old and is required to register for an identity card.


It will be quite a race...

Today Online
31 Dec 2009

Letter from Michael Loh

Parents of newborns can now decide which race they want to put into their children's birth certificates. Furthermore, mixed-marriage parents can choose the father's race, mother's race or a mixture of the two. An example was given of a Caucasian being married to a Chinese; the parents had the option of putting down the race as Caucasian, Chinese or Eurasian.

What if the Caucasian is a Canadian? He/she definitely is no European, so do the parents put Canadian/Chinese? Indeed, is Canadian a race? Indeed, is being European a race?

What about an English father and an Indian mother? Do they put Anglo-Indian? Historically, that term was not considered acceptable term in polite society. Or should they put Indo-English? Or maybe the child is Euro-Indian ... but then I remember reading that the British Isles are not considered European in the first place. What about Indo-Caucasian?

And if an Indian is married to a Chinese, do you then say the child is Indo-Chinese? What if the child is a mix of Indian and Vietnamese or Laotian or Cambodian?

So as marriages get more and more mixed, the idea of race become more tricky. I suggest that the Immigrations & Checkpoins Authority think twice before really starting this new ruling, unless they are willing to accept great creativity in this new field in the application form.