House reluctant to give 'privileges'

House reluctant to give 'privileges'

Tiarma Siboro and Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The House of Representatives has set up a special commission
to draft a revision of Law No. 62/1958 on citizenship, but few
people expect a quick revision after some legislators warned of
the negative implications of giving "privileges" to mixed
marriage couples.

A member of the commission, Lukman Hakim Sjaifuddin from the
United Development Party (PPP), promised that legislators would
craft a law that respected the basic rights of the people who
lived in the country.

Yet, he said, the legislators could not just remove all of the
articles considered unfair to expatriates married to Indonesians.

"Some of my fellow legislators are worried about the possible
negative implications on politics, culture and security if we
grant 'legal privileges' to expatriates," Lukman said.

"There is an idea of adopting a system that enables children
who are born in a family where the mothers or fathers are
foreigners to have dual citizenship, but I predict there will be
a rigorous debate over the issue," Lukman told The Jakarta Post.

To try and bridge the different views among legislators,
Lukman said he suggested several conditions for dual citizenship,
including the principle of reciprocity.

That means that only children of mothers or fathers from those
countries that offer dual citizenship to Indonesians would be
eligible.

"However, incorporating such a policy into the new law will
not be easy as many of my fellow legislators have questioned
whether people with dual citizenship would be as loyal to the
country as those with only Indonesian nationality," Lukman said.

Indonesia adopts the principle of ius sanguinis, which means
that children automatically receive the nationality of their
father. Other countries, including the United States, adopt the
ius soli principle, which grants nationality to people based on
where they were born.

The ius sanguinis principle creates problems for children of
Indonesian women who marry foreigners. In the worse case
scenario, children born to Indonesian women who are married to
foreigners from countries that employ the ius soli principle can
become stateless.

Legislator and women's activist Nursyahbani Katjasungkana said
the laws on citizenship and immigration (Law No. 9/1998)
discriminated against women, children and Chinese-Indonesians.
She wants the government and the House to deliberate the two laws
simultaneously.

"I have told the commission that dual citizenship will enable
children to live in this country without any discrimination and
protect them from legal abuses that they usually face for not
being 'pure Indonesians'.

"I also asked the commission to consider another new policy
that would help mixed marriage couples obtain permanent residence
if they really wanted to stay here," she said, citing the rigid
bureaucracy that mixed marriage couples must deal with each time
they want to obtain a permit to live or work in the country.

The couples face similar problems in seeking permits for their
children to live in Indonesia.

Lukman expects the new citizenship law will require all state
officials to ease the process of obtaining permits to prevent
couples from being exploited by corrupt officials.

"Well, you know, immigration procedures can be tiring, so we
want to simplify them. Principally, no legal procedures should be
allowed to violate people's basic rights," Lukman said.