NAIROBI, Kenya, May 26- The government has launched a 60-day Rapid Response Initiative (RRI) to expedite the regularisation of the status of Kenyans who hold dual citizenship and had renounced or lost their Kenyan citizenship before the promulgation of the new constitution.
The exercise also targets mixed-status families, with the spouses of Kenyan citizens and their descendants set to be issued with legal identity documents in a deliberate effort to stabilize the families.
Some of these individuals are undocumented, others hold temporary status or other dispensations, while others are trapped in long waiting lists and backlogs of the immigration bureaucracy.
Speaking during the launch at Immigration Headquarters in Nyayo House, Dr. Fred Matiang’i said approximately 25,000 Kenyans had lost their birthright citizenship before the new constitutional dispensation, but over 5,000 have already submitted applications seeking to regain it.
“The processing of the two services is associated with long processes and delays. In part, the delay is attributed to mandatory security checks, as well as slow and cumbersome internal processes. This has caused a huge backlog of applications that are awaiting to be processed,” the Cabinet Secretary said.
He said the purpose of the RRI program is to re-engineer the processes used to issue “Citizenship and Permanent Residence, clear the current backlog, and put in place a framework that will ensure speedy processing and issuance of these services.”
Matiangi said Kenyans who had lost their citizenship can now reapply, since the 2010 constitution allows dual citizenship.
“The government is aware that Kenyans who lost their citizenship during the dispensation of the old constitution are eager to regain Kenya Citizenship, which is their birth right. These Kenyans are expected to abide by the restrictions that apply to foreign nationals. They apply for visas and cannot engage in gainful employment unless they are issued with permits and passes,” he said.
“My ministry has put in place measures to expedite processing of all applications for Regaining Kenya Citizenship. All the pending applications will be processed speedily within the period of the RRI. I encourage Kenyans in diaspora who need to regain Kenya Citizenship to apply and send their applications for processing.”
Already, he said he had written to the Attorney General requesting him to engage Parliament with a view to amending the Act and simplify the application process even further.
The Cabinet Secretary noted that the move also seeks to issue lawful permanent residence status to qualified foreign investors, many of whom are potential employers whose efforts will not only spur Kenya’s economic growth but also create thousands of jobs for locals.
“We have about 500 pending applications…in the next 60 days, we will go through all of them and sort them out. The law provides the threshold of investment and the number of years you ought to have been in our country. Some of these investors have shown great love and commitment to Kenya,” he said.
The Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Industrialization, Trade and Enterprise Development, Betty Maina, vouched for Kenya’s attractiveness as an investment destination and appealed to foreign investors to take full advantage of the RRI period to legitimize their stay in the country.
According to Dr. Matiang’i, the government’s focus is on deploying the most immediate solutions to undue technicalities and complexities of the application processes without short-cutting the commitment to immigration integrity and national security.
He also warned brokers and unscrupulous middlemen seeking rent-seeking opportunities by frustrating the applicants.
The intention is to flatten the barriers to adjustment of citizenship status and social integration, and all applications must be verified to avoid potential devaluation of the Kenyan citizenship and winnow out criminal aliens from our systems.
As such, each document will be subjected to rigorous background checks, name by name, but the process is set to be expeditious due to the capacity adjustment in the immigration quality control.
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