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