Getting to know my local immigration officials

With December 9^th being Indonesia’s Anti-Corruption Day, marked by protests around the country against recent corruption cases, it seemed like a prime time to illustrate my ongoing struggle with corrupt and bureaucratic immigration officials in Jambi.  As I am stilling waiting for my work visa to come through, I have been surviving month to month on a renewable “Sosial Budaya” visa.  This, however, requires a monthly trip to the immigration office where the front desk officials have come to know me well.  They clearly like to make my life, or at least that of my work supervisor who has to accompany me, as hard as possible, with each renewal requiring different forms to fill out, more to photo copy and longer waits.  Each time we going there thinking we are fully prepared from the requests from the last visit (two passport photos, the specific pages of my passport photocopied, my passport, and the letter of support from my organization), they still give us more tasks to complete!  It is evident by their behavior, and comments from others in the waiting room, that just a little bit of money would move the process along much quicker.

After the hassle of this last time I was eventually notified that my passport was ready to pick up so I headed there on my own since my coworkers were busy.  The regular desk officials (who I have come up with some descriptive nicknames) were visibly disappointed that I had not brought my “friend” (I suspect they wanted to hassle as many people as possible) but he handed me the passport with its beautiful brand new stamp nonetheless.  Still smiling, the man shattered my joy and relief by announcing that I needed to photo copy this new stamp for them immediately!  Oh the annoyance I felt but also the sense of freedom that I could just take the passport with its stamp and peace out.  Hoping to discourage this request I began to pretend that I did not know where a photocopy shop was or that I had means to get there.  But this did not persuade him and I think he saw the possibility of me just walking out the door with my passport so he then came out from behind the counter and said he would take me himself. 

Now you may ask, doesn’t the immigration office have its own photocopy machine it could use?  Wouldn’t it then be a waste of both our time to go get a photocopy that was never needed previously?  But no, that sort of practical thinking does not often seem to run through the brains of bureaucrats in Indonesia.  So I jumped on the back of the official’s motor bike (while the parking attendants laughed in amusement, possibly since they had seen me arrive on my own motorbike), and we drove the 50 meters to the photocopy shop that I have visited many times on these monthly trips.

The ironic thing is that I thought I was kind of getting back at the immigration officials by making them take me to complete the last task, them having to exert effort on my behalf finally.  In reality though, I learned that this man was happy enough to spend time with a buleh girl and did not even think twice about wasting his time.  Now I have one more renewal on this epic of a visa experience and next month will have to do a visa run to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur and start the whole process over again.  Oh the corruption, bureaucracy, and inefficiencies here!  And they tell me it is difficult to get a visa to go to the US!