Moral Of The Story: Check Your Passport Before You Leave Immigration
As Singaporean Muslims prepare for the upcoming Hari Raya festivities, many will be making a trip to nearby Johor Bahru to stock up on Eid goodies.
That’s just what a certain Ms Nabilah did with her family this week.
They returned to Singapore early on Monday (4 Jun) morning.
But what should have been a simple chop, scan and go through Malaysian and Singaporean immigration became a drawn-out affair that involved a return trip to Malaysia.
Ms Nabilah detailed her experience on Facebook and we summarise it after the jump.
It started with a wrong date
According to Ms Nabilah, the immigration officer at Johor chopped her passport with a “20 February 2018” stamp, suggesting that she left the country on 20 February.
That’s nearly 4 months earlier than the date Ms Nabilah had actually left.
She writes,
Can you imagine how many passports he chopped that night?
Ms Nabilah and her family noticed the error immediately but were not able to stop to rectify it as there were many drivers behind them.
They also went through every page of their passport to make sure that it was the immigration officer who had made the mistake, and not them.
When they arrived at Woodlands Checkpoint, where they told an Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) personnel what had happened.
(We were) escorted by 2 officers to the ICA office, where we waited for another 15 – 30 minutes for them to update us on the situation.
They were then escorted by 2 police officers back to the JB checkpoint, where they had to queue once again.
Officers then amended the original chop to reflect their actual date of departure from Malaysia.
Ms Nabilah claims that she wrote her post to remind travellers to always check their passports before leaving immigration.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises this as well, writing,
When you enter or depart Malaysia, check that your passport is stamped correctly before leaving the immigration booth. This ensures you are not breaching Malaysia’s immigration laws.
Netizens share their experience
Her post went viral, attracting more than 3,000 shares.
Netizens also chimed in with their own awry immigration experiences across the border.
This netizen recalls how his friends were seemingly “tested” by JB immigration officers:
Another claimed that a friend of hers had been jailed because of this.
It’s likely that the person was jailed under Section 6(3) of the Immigration Act.
Netizens had a host of useful suggestions for frequent travellers, such as Malaysia Automated Clearance System (MACS).
MACS allows Singaporean passport-holders to pass through Malaysian immigration without having their passports stamped.
It costs $35 a year to sign up for MACS (sign up here).
We’re just glad that Ms Nabilah’s pre-Hari Raya trip was not marred by any unfortunate incidents.
PSA: Stay vigilant when you travel, folks.
Featured image from Facebook.
