U.S. policy

Many affluent families in Indonesia are sending their sons and daughters to the United States to study, even though scholastic achievements are mediocre; it is just for the sake of prestige. Not many people know that only the so-called accredited schools are those whose level of teaching is considered up to standard.

Last year, many families, who have their sons and daughters studying in the U.S., were shocked to learn that a girl from Indonesia studying at a university in the U.S. and living in a dormitory alone, was abused and killed.

A distant relative of my colleague, was so worried about her daughter that she asked her unmarried sister to watch over her daughter. The two sisters relieve each other after a period of three months as the daughter's chaperone. This goes on for a year, but recently the unmarried sister applied for the visa at the U.S. Embassy, she was turned down for the simple reason that she goes to and fro to the U.S. and she is therefore misusing her visa by working. She was denied a visa, much less a stay permit. All her protests fell on deaf ears.

Recently, when I received my newspaper, frequently a sheet of paper is inserted inviting people of Indonesian nationality to apply as an immigrant to the United States. This makes me wonder about Uncle Sam's policy. On the one hand, the U.S strongly discourage people from working in the U.S. with a tourist visa, but on the other hand, it invites a polyglot of people to live in the U.S., while it is common knowledge that it is not easy to make a living in a strange country without the essential knowledge of the language and without a special profession. Further, the U.S. is also haunted by recession and unemployment.

A. DJUANA

Jakarta