Marriage problem
Marriage problem
There have been so many letters from your readers concerning immigration laws and how the laws effect some people. I don't intend to add to the diversity of opinions, but would like to say that my wife and I experienced similar inconveniences because the laws are different in different countries.
When we got married my wife was an American citizen and I was Indonesian. We were married in a Moslem mosque in Kobe, Japan. In order to make the marriage legal, I had to have a statement from the Indonesian Consul in Japan. The year was 1946, so there was no Indonesian Consul anywhere in Japan. In 1950, an Indonesian official was attached to the Dutch Embassy in Tokyo, who stated that, since the marriage was performed by a Moslem cleric, it was legal and issued both of us a "temporary" passport. After that we settled in Indonesia. For the sake of really legalizing our marriage we petitioned the Pengadilan Agama (Court of Religious Affairs) in Bandung. The Pengadilan Agama duly issued an official document stating that our marriage was/is legal. We lived in Indonesia for thirteen years. Nobody asked us anything and everything would have been OK, if we stayed in Indonesia....Well, we did not.
My wife wanted to visit her parents in the U.S. She took the children to see the grandparents they had never seen. She planned to stay in the U.S. for two months. After she was gone a month, I got lonely and decided to join her for a month in California. All of a sudden I was caught between the different laws of different lands.
The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta refused to issue me a visa. I argued that I just wanted a visitor's visa. The American Consul countered: "Because your wife is in the U.S., we cannot issue you a visa. We have reason to believe that you may not come back to Indonesia but stay in the U.S."
I pleaded: "I'd really like to visit my wife and her parents. What can I do?" Then the Consul said: "You can apply for an immigrant visa." I said: "OK, give me an immigrant visa."
Now the Consul said: "We cannot issue you an immigrant visa, because your marriage, which was performed in Japan is not legal by Japanese laws. We, therefore, also consider the marriage not legal."
I encountered: "My marriage was legalized by an Indonesian court," to which the Consul said: "The marriage took place in Japan, so it cannot be legalized by an Indonesian court."
...now what? At least the Consul suggested that we both go to Japan and get married all over again, but now, legally.
We followed the suggestion and thought that all would be OK. Wrong! In Kobe we went to the city hall, to get married all over again. The Japanese official said: "Fine, but you both have to have a statement from your respective consulates, that they have no objections to your marriage."
My wife did not have any problem getting the proper statement from the U.S. consulate. The Indonesian Consul refused to give me a similar statement, saying: "You cannot get married, because you are already legally married as per the Pengadilan Agama in Bandung."
Poor me! What now? Well, to make a long story short, we eventually got everything straightened out. We will have our 50th wedding anniversary next year, God willing.
What is now really the moral of the story? If you want to marry a citizen of a country different from your own and you want to get married in yet a different country, make sure you know all the legalities involved in your own country, your spouse's country and the country where you plan to get married. The laws are different, especially the marriage and immigration laws. We cannot expect a country to adjust its laws to our personal needs, we have to adjust ourselves to the rules of the land.
Like they say: "Look before you jump, or you'll be sorry."
DJOKO SOEJOTO
Bandung, West Java