Harassment in immigration
I refer to the letter Mixed marriages from Mr. Gulliver published in The Jakarta Post on Feb. 3, 2001.
Mr. Gulliver, please understand that racism is a human concept and mankind is only human. Having made that point, there is discrimination and harassment in Indonesian immigration laws not because Indonesians do not like Westerners. I am going to be much more practical, or terre-a-terre. It is because Indonesians like to think that we (Westerners) are rich. Usually the majority of expats are men. So, we are the ones who have to go through the most difficult procedures to obtain legal immigration documents.
The vast majority of expats are actually able to get a work permit though what they do in Indonesia could be done by an Indonesian. In these cases, by law, you should never be able to get a work permit. So, one might ask, how could these expats get their temporary stay permit (Kitas)? Well, they just pay off whoever must be paid off to get their work permit. But this is the way it works in many other ministries for all Indonesian people.
I hope the next minister of justice will address this immigration issue in a proper way. A way which is not clearly established to bring wealth to the civil servants who have a license to "kill" any time. That is the reality of today in immigration offices, not only for expats, but also for Indonesian migrant workers or tourists wishing to process their documents. So, Mr. Gulliver keep in mind that Indonesians and also foreign women - though less than foreign men - have to suffer immigration rules and rulers.
And since this kind of process exists in the overall Indonesian administration, our problem is to be put in an overall (rotten) context. As long as practices such as corruption, collusion and nepotism are not erased from Indonesia we will all have to suffer from discrimination, procedural harassment, etc.
To the ministers now in charge of Indonesia's destiny, all we -- Indonesian citizens and expats -- need is less discrimination and harassment from ministry procedures and officials. We simply ask for more humanity.
YVAN MAGAIN
Tubize, Belgium