immigration may revise visa free travel policy

Tourists from 169 countries enjoy visa free travel to Indonesia right now. It is such a privilege to travel to such beautiful country without having to pay a single dime for the visa. However this privilege may soon be taken back from most countries because of few rotten apples.

Heru Santoso, spokesman for the Law and Human Rights Ministry’s Immigration Directorate General recently issued a statement mentioning that government is considering to limit their visa free travel policy again as there have been a significant increase in criminal cases involving foreigners. “In terms of percentage, the violations are small, but they’re still violations,” he said, as quoted by Kompas yesterday.

Heru further expressed the sentiments that Immigration Directorate General is in the process of evaluating whether the current visa free policy is bringing more good or bad to Indonesia. So the cons will outweigh pros so they will give their recommendation to nullify the policy reducing the number of countries with visa free travel policy.

Heru gave the example of recent fake monks that traveled to Indonesia from China and were involved in major criminal activities. These two fake monks were later on arrested by the authorities as they were found begging for money from ethnic Chinese Citizens in West Jakarta.