Finally!

After 10 weeks, we now have all our required paperwork for our extended stay in Indonesia! What a pain!! I've asked Ronnie to share this experience, since I have long since forgotten all the details. Some of this may be TMI, but it's impossible to tell this story in 25 words or less. If you're not planning to move to Indonesia, you have permission to skip to the summary statement at the end.

first fingerprinting in Bandung police station

To enter Indonesia legally and work for 10 months required a lot of paperwork. Little did we know about the cost of that paperwork in dollars and time. Had I realized what was involved, I would have spent my time and money on a service to do the leg work for us. Keep in mind, the office visits mentioned below were not just in and out affairs. They always involved a period of waiting in addition to the actual service time.

copies, copies and more copies!!

While still in Texas, I had to apply for a research permit from the Ministry of Technology and Research in Jakarta (KRT). Once that was approved, we applied for a visa through the Houston Consulate ($100 each), which took 4 trips to get the paperwork correct and collect our passports with visas.

Upon arrival in Jakarta, we had to go to KRT, pay a $600 permit fee and obtain a letter needed for the police office, which we delivered. The next day we returned to the police office to collect our SKL, which is a travel permit. From there we traveled back to KRT, submitted the travel permit and received a research permit letter (in triplicate) and a photo ID card. 

typewriter in Immigration Office, Jakarta

old fashioned fingerprinting, Bandung police station

electronic fingerprinting, Bandung Immigration off

With these documents in hand we could legally travel to Bandung, check into a hotel and wake the next morning to go to the immigration office to apply for a Kitas (temporary residence permit) and POA (alien registration card). Oops! I forgot to bring a letter from my sponsor at ITB, so we were not allowed to file our applications. To make use of a trip to that side of town, we traveled to the main police office to be fingerprinted and submit photographs for our SKLD (Certificate of Police Registration), which we could not apply for since we did not yet have our Kitas. The next day we went back to submit the applications for the Kitas and POA. We returned again to the immigration office a few days later when instructed to do so to pay the application fees. (ouch!) We made another trip to the immigration office to get fingerprinted and photographed, and then yet another trip to pick up our Kitas (ID card and blue book) and POA which was stamped in our passports.

On the trip to pick up our Kitas we instead applied for a (ME/E) multiple entry/exit permit (required for researcher and good for 6 months). The Kitas must be submitted with the ME/E application which means we could not use it to visit the local police station and register where we had decided to live. The ME/E application is filed on a different floor than the Kitas application, but nevertheless, we had to duplicate the same material used to apply for a Kitas (which was attached to the ME/E application). We returned to immigration office a few days later to pay the ME/E application fee, and then a few days after that we were able to return to the Immigration office to collect out Kitas and passports (which contained the POA stamp and the ME/E permit stamp).

Next we located the local police station for our particular neighborhood and registered with them using our Kitas and SKJ. We returned again the next day to collect a letter certifying that we had registered our residence. Btw, since we live near Secapa, a military training school, the police station suggested to my host that I might be a spy and that he should watch me. His justification was that I am an expert in computer technology and I chose to live next to a military training base. As a side note, I will mention this is the only person my host gave a small amount of money to as we were leaving. It was not a bribe since we had our letters in hand, but it was clearly a personal payment for signing our letters.

 here we are - all nice and legal!

Finally, we used out letter of registration to go back to the main police office and file an application for an SKLD (a certificate of police registration). Again we paid a fee to submit the application. All the paperwork was sent to the main police station in Jakarta (which we visited on Day 2 in Indonesia) and a month later we made another trip back to the main police office in Bandung to collect our SKLDs.

After two and half months, we now have all our required paperwork! However, I still need to take my SIP (research permit letter) issued in Jakarta to the local Ministry of Home Affairs and Regional Autonomy. They will issue a SPP (letter of research notification) the following day, and I need to take this notification to the Governor’s Office in West Java along with a copy of my research proposal and the notification letter. I hope to get this done soon (just to be legal and all). HA

Summary: 3 trips to Ministry of Research in Jakarta and 2 trips to the main police station in Jakarta. 10 trips to the local immigration office in Bandung, 2 trips to the local police station in Bandung and 3 trips to the main police station in Bandung. And we are not quite done yet….