Are we still welcome in Malaysia? It seems MM2H or "Malaysia My Second Home program" is going from bad to worse…
What happened to "you ‘ll be forever at home" in their MM2H slogan?
Malaysia my second home
As the name implies, Malaysia my second home is an opportunity to buy yourself a home – property that is – in Malaysia.
It was targeting retirees like me who wanted to buy a house in Malaysia and stay for the rest of their life.
Under the MM2H program you apply for a visa for Malaysia that will give you the possibility to go in and out Malaysia as many times as you want for a period of 5 years.
It’s better than :
- those tourist visas that only give you 3 months
- those fiancee visas that only give you 6 months
How unpractical is a 5 year only Malaysia My Second Home program
- Take the fiancee visa: you are married but you can only see your wife for 6 months? Although the spouse visa should at least gives the spouse 5 years, in reality the spouses I know in Malaysia visit immigration every 6 months to get their spouse visa renewed (and pray that they get it…).
- The same problem with the MM2H visa: it’s only valid for 5 years. Now who want’s to buy property in Malaysia when he is not sure that he can stay in his property after 5 years living in Malaysia?
Confusing Malaysia My Second Home program
The first applicants, got their MM2H visa for 5 years. Then the law changed and new applicants could get a visa for 10 years.
What about those of 5 years? For no logical reason they still have to apply every 5 years for their Malaysian visa, where those having a 10 year MM2H visa only apply every 10 years.
MM2H visas started under the immigration department, then suddenly they moved to the tourism department (which is also understandable as we spend our money here traveling around the whole of Malaysia) and now it seems to be under 2 departments.
"Seems to be" because nobody really knows what is happening. A pain in the butt when I want to open a fixed deposit and the bank insists I put my employer’s name.
As a retiree I have no employer, as an MM2H holder I am not allowed to have a job in Malaysia, but if you tell the girl in the bank that these are the rules of MM2H… MM2H seems to be as well known as "the amount of socks my grandmother had when she was 8"…
If you don’t like Malaysia, then don’t buy property, then don’t come
This is the real truth: if you want to complain too much about a country, then why do you stay there in the first place?
Since I stay in Malaysia, I will repeat the benefits again: the cost of living in Malaysia is low compared to anywhere in Europe and if you look around a bit you will find almost anything that you would find in Europe.
But if I want to tell my friends about MM2H I can only say now: apply and see what happens.
Where at the beginning of the Malaysia my second home program I could advice people overseas what they needed to do to get their visa application approved before selling their houses and start all over here.
In these unstable economical times, people don’t want to sell their property overseas hoping they will get approved to buy property in Malaysia under the Malaysia My Second Home program.
Former Malaysia Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had another heart surgery on
