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    • Other countries understand the need for specificity in these situations — the US currently explicitly bans “people who have entered the UK”. The EMGS protocol, meanwhile, just says “all international students (except from the United Kingdom)”, which is ambiguous and unhelpful. Does “from” mean “travelling from”, or “citizens of”? And if it’s based on what passport you hold: WHY WOULD YOU EVER DECIDE TO DO IT THAT WAY?

    • Forgive me for not persisting in blind optimism when we’ve all spent the past 10 months watching the authorities repeatedly dangle hope in front of our faces only for absolutely nothing to change.

      • It’s not a blind optimism when some other supporting indicators exist:
        1. Vaccination in MY starts om February

        2. Hybrid learning for next semester is a very high possibilty, even also stated in the latest bulletin (some malaysian colleagues in UM and UiTM also said their university has comfirmed this)

        3. New students which eVals are still in progress is literally mentioned under the student category to be allowed to enter

        4. The MY government is in a more pressing situation than before to allow new students to enter, otherwise it would be harder for them to recover the education sector.

        might want to consider that it is you that went for blind negativity instead.

        • Re: your third point – section 1.8 states that the SOP applies to new students whose eval approval is currently pending. That isn’t useful information – it’s reiterating that those of us currently waiting for our evals will be able to follow the steps laid out in section 2b once our application is processed and our evals are issued. We’ve already known that since day one. It is not helpful to be told “you’ll be allowed to come in once immigration says you’re allowed to come in”.

          It’s impossible to extrapolate anything from your other indicators. We already know that the connection between covid transmission rates and the risk posed by returning students is tenuous at best – otherwise we wouldn’t have seen foreign workers (a much larger population than students) and even certain non visa holding categories like foreign spouses of Malaysian nationals being permitted to return. Institutions were making promises of transitioning to hybrid learning in September only to be forced to abandon them in the following months. And with the apparent lack of a rational basis behind so many of the policy decisions made so far, I don’t think it’s wise to rely on the assumption that the government will inevitably do the right thing for the economy.

          What we need more than anything is a yes or no answer to whether immigration has started processing applications again. Without that information, the future is just as murky now as it was throughout 2020.

          I don’t want to be pessimistic. I’m not posting this stuff with the intent of causing people to be upset. I just want people to understand that it’s absolutely meaningless – and borderline insulting – for EMGS to provide an instruction manual for entering Malaysia without any accompanying assurances that we’ll be in a position to make use of it anytime soon.

          • I see your intention, thank you for the effort and sorry for not engaging in the best way before. However, you could’ve do it in a more neutral way by not adding your personal pessimistic projection of the future like “we could still be stuck until 2022” (post below). Thats really unnecessary, especially when you state that in a reply to someone trying to be happy about the news. Pretty sure many people also have the worse case scenario in mind, but don’t want to state it here.

            • You’re right, and I apologise for that. All these months of crushing disappointment have left me very skeptical of any news that does trickle out. Back in September, I was asking someone else to cool it and please stop posting extremely negative takes about students possibly not being able to return until January, before the ban on student entry was confirmed – and now I’m doing the exact same thing, because I feel like an idiot for ever having been optimistic. It sucks.

              Aside from being desperate for proper updates on what’s going on at immigration, I wish someone would meaningfully engage with us and acknowledge the miserable experience we’ve had.

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