On visa policy

On visa policy

I refer to the article by Junita Sitorus titled Why we need
changes in RI's visa policy published in The Jakarta Post on May
19, 2003.

If a 60-day visa facility resulted in criminal offenses such
as drug smuggling, how is a 30-day facility going to curb this?
Would you please explain this? And if people want to enter this
country as commercial sex workers, how is the 30-day period going
to change this? (I'd say they just use a visa, any visa, to get
into the country and then disappear underground).

Also, what about the fight you should lead against malpractice
within all of your offices rotten with "travel agents"? We -- the
end users -- are still waiting for any kind of improvement.
Yet, sending a reply to you is just a cool drop on an overheated
plate.

What your article shows most is that to become a director
general in Indonesia, you need not necessarily stand out in logic
capability. Evidently, your article speaks volumes about the low
quality of human resources here, even at the "top" level.

The way you view the situation is outrageous toward all good
expatriates who have to face your more and more surprising
immigration rules. You simply have no idea how complex it is for
us, foreigners married to Indonesian women, to comply with our
immigration obligations and duties (we actually have no rights)
and, at the same time, find money to survive -- very often in the
informal sector through the development of a family business.
Still we are able to provide jobs to many Indonesian people,
though we ourselves are not able to get a stay or a work permit.

The immigration office now asks for US$40 to stay in the
country for 30 days only. During my first free 60-day stay in
Indonesia as a backpacker in 1990, I did not have enough time to
visit the country. So how could that be possible in 30 days? I
remind the Indonesian authorities that all the neighboring
countries deliver a 60-day tourist visa.

As for the $40, it's simply no more than an organized racket
targeting tourists, as the government keeps targeting its own
people and thus my in-laws have to pay their Rp 1 million exit
visa to visit their grandchildren in Belgium. Though they are
officially acknowledged as poor people at the village level, they
still had to pay that tax (even in rich European countries we do
not impose such a tax on our citizens). Of course, I had to send
them the money to pay that tax for them.

Be logical for once and go through the immigration policies.
Since the immigration office has so poor an idea of most
expatriates' actions and of what they could bring to the
Indonesian people, just forbid all of from stepping one foot on
your sacred soil instead of creating such nonsensical policies.

YVAN MAGAIN, Tubize, Belgium