Andreya receives social visit visa

SURABAYA: Andreya Masaru Miyakoshi, the four-year-old Japanese boy recently deported for overstaying his visa, returned on Thursday after the Indonesian embassy in Singapore granted him a social visit visa.

With the document, Andreya will be able to stay in the country for 60 days. His mother, Atik Kristia Yuliani, an Indonesian, brought him to Bali where she planned to arrange for an extendible limited stay visa.

The child can later apply for a permanent residence permit, which allows him to stay for as long as five years before he is eligible to apply for Indonesian citizenship. He is a Japanese citizen, in accordance with the nationality of his father, Mitsuo Miyakoshi.

Ida Sampit Karo-Karo, Atik's lawyer, said Andreya's problem for the moment was solved. The legal problems facing children of parents with different nationalities, however, have yet to be tackled.

"We need a legal breakthrough to handle possible similar cases in the future," she said, but did not elaborate.

Andreya's deportation grabbed public attention because he was very young and his mother claimed she did not have the money to apply for an extension of his visa or take him out of the country.

The directorate general of immigration at the Ministry of Justice denied yesterday it had acted inhumanely by deporting Andreya. "We have been acting very humanely by not bringing him to court and not preventing him from reentering Indonesia," the office said. (27)