Immigration laws biased and sexist

Thanks for the information from Mursanudin Ghani of the Directorate General of Immigration's public relations section (The Jakarta Post, Aug. 13, 1999). He explained that a foreign man who marries an Indonesian woman can stay with his wife for two months on a social/cultural visit visa sponsored by her, and he can then extend it five times for a month at each time.

And then what?

It is absurd because the husband has to leave the wife. Indonesian immigration laws violate human rights because they force their own people, Indonesian women, to leave their country and go with their husbands to his country. They also pressure foreign women with Indonesian husbands to abandon their own nationality to become Indonesian citizens. The women find it becomes increasingly difficult for them to extend their stay permit in Indonesia the longer they retain their nationality.

It's a lucrative business at the immigration office. Most countries have patriarchal arrangements but not to the extent of Indonesia, forcing married Indonesian women to go to the foreign man's country and compelling foreign wives to take the Indonesian nationality of their husbands. Or the foreign wife leaves, taking her husband along, because he can reside, keep his nationality and is even allowed to work in her homeland.

People of mixed marriages should have the right to live where they want to and obtain the necessary support from the government in question.

Foreign spouses, men or women, in Indonesia should be given reasonable, yearly and later five-yearly extendible stay permits without any barriers or strings attached from immigration and they should be allowed to work normally (not needing all kinds of permits) and keep their nationality, which is the case in other countries. It is ridiculous if a foreign husband is not allowed to work in Indonesia and theoretically has to live on the wife's earnings (where is the patriarchal principle in that?). It is cruel and heartless, and maybe revengeful and spiteful, to tell the Indonesian woman that it's her own fault by marrying a foreigner. It's the same for the foreign women -- why did they marry an Indonesian?

Follow your husband, be a "good wife" and give up your nationality for him! How mean! The Indonesian laws for mixed marriages have to be revised and should not discriminate against women as they do now.

Hopefully the new government will look into this matter.

MRS. SUHARTO

Jakarta