Register birth in 60 days? Mixed marriage

[daniel_lombok]

Hi all,

Our son is 3 months old, born in Indonesia to an Indonesian mother and British father, who were married at the KUA & have Buku Nikah.

We have obtained his documents at the dukcapil: Indonesian birth certificate and Kartu Keluarga, which list his nationality as Indonesian.

We have applied for his British passport, but we are still waiting for it to be issued.

We followed the guidance from this site: https://www.expat.or.id/info/mixmarriages.html#Dual

It didn't say anything about having to register the birth at immigration within 60 days. But we were in the immigration office yesterday and they said we were late registering him, as we should have done so in 60 days to get a lapor lahir. We now have to go back for a berita acara pemeriksaan.

After asking on several platforms, it seems that many people did not register the birth of their child in 60 days to immigration and had no problem getting an affidavit/Indonesian passport at a later date.

But I was also sent this regulation, which says that changes of civil status of a foreigner must be reported in 60 days (pasal 3): https://www.imigrasi.go.id/uploads/1...EnIXQZDV17TKjo

My question is, first of all, are they able to charge us and what can we expect if so?

Second, why is this 60 day rule not more widely known? Even when we went to the immigration office once, they did not say anything about having to register in 60 days.

Thank you to anyone who can help.

[marcus]

(1) ...are they able to charge us and what can we expect if so?

(2) why is this 60 day rule not more widely known? Even when we went to the immigration office once, they did not say anything about having to register in 60 days.

(1) Unfortunately , yes , I think they can sue you (in Court) , although I never heard of such a thing in all my time in this Forum .

(2) In my view , no Law/Regulation/rule is widely known anywhere in the world . About this specific subject , foreigners don't expect such a harsh punishment for not updating/being late in updating information to Immigration , so the tendency to miss it .

I don't know about the KITAP , but my e-ITAS (new version of KITAS) has a "Disclaimer" , in which , its first item alerts us about the need to report those changes specified in Article 71 of the Immigration Law , "in an immediate period of time" (the exact wording used there) . No mention of the 60 days .

Neither the Immigration Law nor the Regulation PP no.31 , Year 2013 (Implementation of the Immigration Law) stated the time limit , and the 60 days was only defined in 2016 in a simple Guideline .

And another strange thing is that the Guideline below stated the limit only for the civil status data , so the other changes mentioned in the Law are still without time limit definition , as far as I know .


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UU no.6 , Year 2011 (Immigration Law)
Article 71
Each foreigner (holding an e-ITAS/KITAS/KITAP) residing in the Territory of Indonesia shall:
a. provide all necessary information regarding his/her identity and / or of his/her familiy, and report any changes in civil status, nationality, occupation, guarantor, or a change of address to the local Immigration Office; or
b. ...

Article 116
Each foreigner who do not perform his/her obligations as stipulated in Article 71 shall be punished with a maximum confinement of 3 (three) months or a fine of up to 25,000,000, 00 (twenty five million rupiah).


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Petunjuk Pelaksanaan no. IMI-GR 01.13.3849 , Tahun 2016 (Implementation Guidelines)
Article 3
(1) ...
(2) A foreigner or his/her sponsor must (formally) inform Immigration within 60 days of any change in his/her : marriage , divorce , child birth , or family member death.

[daniel_lombok]

Thank you for the reply marcus. 

(1) In your experience, what is the most likely outcome if someone does overstep this time limit?

(2) I see, the 2016 implementation guideline is the only place that I've seen the 60 days, and that is a very hard to find document - no English copy and only an image. They certainly do make it hard to spot. But if it is something they can sue over then I do think it should be made more obvious on expat forums/guidelines. In hindsight, of course, we should have checked with immigration earlier, but all sources online told me that there is no time limit and it is fine to get the foreign passport first, which is taking especially long due to covid.

[daniel_lombok]

I see you've updated your reply, thanks for that.

I'm on a family kitas, (the online ITAS), and yes it does have that disclaimer of reporting changes in civil status, in exactly the same wording, no mention of 60 days.

The issue here is that civil status in English refers to marital status (at least that's the only way I've seen it used). When they ask for your civil status in an official form, you select either single, married, divorced, etc., not 'father, mother, parent, etc.', so I didn't think it was anything to be concerned about.

Only now when I went on the full immigration regulations document did I see that it breaks it down further into changes in 'family identity', while in the Petunjuk Pelaksanaan no. IMI-GR 01.13.3849 , Tahun 2016 it breaks it down that civil status refers to 4 categories: birth, marriage, divorce, death. 

 

[marcus]

(1) In your experience, what is the most likely outcome if someone does overstep this time limit?

(2) ...but all sources online told me that there is no time limit...

(3) ...the Petunjuk Pelaksanaan no. IMI-GR 01.13.3849 , Tahun 2016 it breaks it down that civil status refers to 4 categories: birth, marriage, divorce, death....

(1) I have no experience in this subject , but I guess Immigration will not go to Court for this kind of foreigner's fault . In my view it is a too harsh rule by considering such thing as a crime . In comparison , indonesian Law UU no.24 , Year 2013 also stablishes a limit of 60 days for reporting a baby's birth to Kantor Catatan Sipil , but it does not say it is a crime for not doing it or being late in doing it .

(2) Unfortunately information in the internet are not always correct (the other day I even didn't like an article from Bloomberg) . As much as possible I always try to check the Government's Laws/Regulations/rules .

(3) Not only the Immigration Guideline states what it meant by "civil status" (marriage , divorce , birth and death) , but also the official explanation of the Immigration Law (Article 71) says : What is meant by "change in civil status" includes birth, marriage, divorce and death.

[daniel_lombok]

The frustrating thing is that the immigration officers made no mention of this (the fact that I broke the terms of my visa by not reporting a birth), but were only concerned about the fact that our son is a foreigner and had to be registered within 60 days. They said if we don't do this in 60 days then he won't be able to get an affidavit and 'choose his nationality'. But he is definitely an Indonesian citizen, as per UU12/2006, and there is no regulation that states a timeline nor fine for registering his dual nationality, I believe this is the most current law regarding that -https://soekarnohatta.imigrasi.go.id/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/NOMOR-22-TAHUN-2012.pdf

Am I correct on that? They have no basis to punish our son or withhold his rights as an Indonesian, and the only issue is that I did not update my status as a foreigner with an ITAS?

But I will ask them to clarify the exact regulation that we have broken.

[marcus]

(a) ...They said if we don't do this in 60 days then he won't be able to get an affidavit and 'choose his nationality'.

(b) But he is definitely an Indonesian citizen, as per UU12/2006, and there is no regulation that states a timeline nor fine for registering his dual nationality...the only issue is that I did not update my status as a foreigner with an ITAS?...

(a) I suggest you not to take that seriously . In more than 12 years in this Forum I have seen many members complaining about information given by government officers , which by the way it is probably common all over the world (I myself was a government officer in my country and can say that it happens there too) .

(b) I agree with you . The 2 subjects are regulated by different Laws/Regulations .

By the way , did you already (late) report your child's birth to Immigration ?

[daniel_lombok]

We had the berita acara pemeriksaan today.

They did in fact state the Petunjuk Pelaksanaan no. IMI-GR 01.13.3849, Tahun 2016. That was the only problem, as we were beyond the 60 days to report any changes in my civil status, but no wrongdoing over our son's nationality/documents.

They asked my wife why we were late reporting it, she simply told them we never heard about this rule but we had followed all the procedures in getting his civil documents and had intended to register him once we received the foreign passport. We had to give evidence of our appointment with VFS where we submitted his British passport application.

Everything is fine, they filed the report and didn't charge us with anything.

They then told us to register his birth, which we will do tomorrow as the office was closing for the day.