US citizen WNI mother with KTP must declare citizenship

[BliGundul]

Our oldest daughter who is attending Undiknas Denpasar is about to turn 21.
She is a US citizen with US Passport, and KTP, granted temporary dual national status many years ago,
which must be clarified by her 21st birthday.
She was born in Bali and has never left Indonesia.
We want to state and maintain her US citizenship as easily and inexpensively as possible.
I do not want her status here to be tied to mine, but rather to her WNI mother.
Before Covigeddon I typically used a Social Visa sponsored by my Balinese wife,
and enjoyed my biannual visa runs to Singapore.
Hopefully one day soon things will get back to something like the"Old Normal".
We are still married and live together.
We were married in 2000, and all of our 3 children are listed on our KK.
On the KK they are listed as Kewarganegaraan WNI.
So much has changed of late that I figured I should ask all you very well informed forum members for suggestions.
Thanks in advance for any insights which might be provided, and up to date.

 

[centurion]

She can renounce her Indonesian citizenship and get KITAP straight away. Mother can be the sponsor.

 

[BliGundul]

She can renounce her Indonesian citizenship and get KITAP straight away. Mother can be the sponsor.

Thanks so much for getting back so quickly. I have been dreading whatever bureaucratic pitfalls might have been laying in wait for quite some time. I used to handle all of my kids' immigration paperwork by myself in what was, at that time, a veritable viper pit of miscreant opportunism cloaked by the color of authority.
That is absolute music to my ears, thanks again!

 

[Helpful Herbert]

By renouncing her Indonesian citizenship she would lose her right to:

• freely work in Indonesia (would need a visa, or to work informally)
• inherit or buy Indonesian land
• pass Indonesian citizenship to any kids
• be exempt from deportation

 

[BliGundul]

By renouncing her Indonesian citizenship she would lose her right to:

• freely work in Indonesia (would need a visa, or to work informally)
• inherit or buy Indonesian land
• pass Indonesian citizenship to any kids
• be exempt from deportation

Understood, and well noted, thanks for taking the time. The citizenship issue is definitely a double edged sword. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

[atlantis]

Our oldest daughter who is attending Undiknas Denpasar is about to turn 21.
(...)
She was born in Bali and has never left Indonesia.

Hi BliGundul
I am curious about what pushes her to adopt a citizenship of a country she never went to apparently, while having been educated here and spend her whole life here, if you don't mind me asking?
I have two kids who hold dual citizenship and would, one being 18 and who will be in the same situation as your daughter in a couple of years.

 

[BliGundul]

Hi atlantis, perhaps I misstated just a bit. We will leave that decision up to my daughter, but in the interests of due diligence and making an informed decision I wanted to review her options, and the ramifications thereof. I have six siblings in the States, and our kids have about 30 cousins, most of whom they have never met. I am quite content to spend the rest of my life in Bali, but I don't want to
assume that the kids will necessarily choose to follow my lead. It is certainly fine with me, what ever she decides, but it is important to really think it through.

 

[Helpful Herbert]

Also worth noting that if she stays in Bali as an American citizen, she would not be able to pass on either American or Indonesian nationality to her children (although presumably her husband would be able to pass on a citizenship, unless he is in the same position):

A child born outside the United States to one U.S. citizen parent and one non-U.S. citizen parent may be entitled to citizenship providing the U.S. citizen parent has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for five years, at least two years of which were after reaching the age of fourteen, prior to the birth of the child. These five years do not need to be consecutive.

 

[BliGundul]

More grist for the due diligence mill, and quite an interesting addendum.
Thanks for diving so deep into the all encompassing bureaucratic waters.

 

[jukung11]

I don't know if anything has changed to online, but I wrote about the law and procedure when a dual citizen turns 18.
https://www.expatindo.org/community/threads/termination-of-dual-citizenship-status.4846/#post-62313

Our oldest daughter who is attending Undiknas Denpasar is about to turn 21

As an American citizen she has the right to financial aid/ social benefit programs if she chooses to get further educated or work in the United States. This can be very helpful if she plans to work internationally. Often Indonesian degrees are not well accepted for upper level employment outside of Indonesia.

She was born in Bali and has never left Indonesia.

This seems like a difficult decision to leave to someone who has never experienced anything but Indonesia. You mentioned 2 other children too which I assume will end up having to make the same decision without any experience in the matter.

How is her English? Would she struggle in the states?

 

[BliGundul]

I don't know if anything has changed to online, but I wrote about the law and procedure when a dual citizen turns 18.
https://www.expatindo.org/community/threads/termination-of-dual-citizenship-status.4846/#post-62313

Thanks jukung11, I have not yet, but will definitely check out your thread.

As an American citizen she has the right to financial aid/ social benefit programs if she chooses to get further educated or work in the United States. This can be very helpful if she plans to work internationally. Often Indonesian degrees are not well accepted for upper level employment outside of Indonesia.

She is in the International Program at Undiknas, which is probably pretty well regarded by Indonesian business entities, seeking employees locally.

This seems like a difficult decision to leave to someone who has never experienced anything but Indonesia. You mentioned 2 other children too which I assume will end up having to make the same decision without any experience in the matter.

How is her English? Would she struggle in the states?

If Pigs Had Wings, money were no object, we would have visited at some point; not for lack of wishing we could.
Discretionary income?
I am familiar with the concept, I was single once.
I just spoke with my 14 year old son about this Pandora's Box over breakfast, that he might start to give it lots of thought, well ahead of his personal deadline.
All of the kids speak English well enough to get around just fine.
They also speak Balinese, Indonesian, and have studied Mandarin and a little bit of Japanese.
They probably THINK in Indonesian.
I have always been a grammatical stickler with them, at home, in the hopes that
they would speak English like native English speakers.
I try to make sure they are more English fluent than their local classmates, which would tend to be a low aspirational metric for US citizens.

 

[Helpful Herbert]

It's good that they speak Indonesian as their first language. In our case the kids barely speak it, which makes the decision even more difficult.

 

[BliGundul]

Fortunately, Indonesian is probably one of the easiest languages on the Planet to learn, due to the use of Time Indicators instead of Verb Conjugations to establish time frame. I should think you might want to prioritize helping them attain fluidity sooner than later. Is their primary language English?
Indonesian was basically introduced to provide a simple unifying language for something like 500 different ethnic groups spread over about 17,000 islands. Based on Malay, the long time market language of SE Asia. Many of those different ethnic groups already had their own languages. If it wasn't drop dead simple there was zero likelihood that it would be accepted. Before I came back to Bali for my second visit in '89, I found a Garuda employee in L.A. who gave an hour and a half class one night a week. I took five classes before my trip, and that foundation and carrying a good small Indo/English dictionary with me at all times made it very easy to quickly get up to speed.
I am totally out of touch with free online resources, but know that there are LOTS of them. I just took a very quick look, and this one looks pretty good. As first conversations are sort of culturally scripted in Indonesia, it is very helpful to learn what will be your personal correct answers to predictable everyday interactions, on the hoof. This next one looks very good too, the images help make memorizing them easier.

I'm guessing that I won't have quite enough time to look through ALL of these today, but nice to know they are there! If you can steer your kids into really spending 20 minutes a day on this, in a week they will be much more comfortable. In a month they will really be rolling right along, on the road to fluency.

 

[Helpful Herbert]

Yes, we use Duolinguo app which is great, I try to encourage him to speak it, but at the end of the day if he speaks to his friends in English, watches all media in English, has school in English and speaks English at home, then he sees no point in speaking it himself. Despite actually being born and living here his whole life. My theory is that even many Indonesians don't even see it as a proper language, for the reasons you mention in your post, and that's why many prioritise English or their local bahasa.

I heard recently that there is a new patois identified called Bahasa Jaksel (South Jakartan language), which is something like Singlish but even more extreme in the way it mixes 2 languages together. In fact I bet some forum members use it at home. This article explains it:
https://www.brilio.net/ngakak/7-pos...erally-bikin-confuse-gimana-gitu-180918p.html. Perhaps that will end up being my kids' native language

 

[BliGundul]

She can renounce her Indonesian citizenship and get KITAP straight away. Mother can be the sponsor.

Might shebe able to go immediately to KITAP seumur hidup, in light of having spent the first 20 years of her life here? I had been filling out Renunciation paperwork for the US, anticipating going to Surabaya (as they were unable to do it at the Consular Office in Bali) next week, my daughter seems to have had a change of heart, and it looks like this is the new path forward. What costs are we talking about, and should we do it ourselves? Or pay an agent?

 

[centurion]

Might shebe able to go immediately to KITAP seumur hidup, in light of having spent the first 20 years of her life here? I had been filling out Renunciation paperwork for the US, anticipating going to Surabaya (as they were unable to do it at the Consular Office in Bali) next week, my daughter seems to have had a change of heart, and it looks like this is the new path forward. What costs are we talking about, and should we do it ourselves? Or pay an agent?

The time being in Indonesia as Indonesian is not counted. Counting starts from the moment of becoming a foreigner. So 5yr KITAP, and after 5 years, the lifetime one.

The Immigration office should know the procedure so better to inform yourself there. Agents are mostly not aware or don't know the procedure of getting KITAP for kids-ex dual citizens and could divert you to some BS.

 

[Nimbus]

Fortunately, Indonesian is probably one of the easiest languages on the Planet to learn, due to the use of Time Indicators instead of Verb Conjugations to establish time frame. I should think you might want to prioritize helping them attain fluidity sooner than later. Is their primary language English?
Indonesian was basically introduced to provide a simple unifying language for something like 500 different ethnic groups spread over about 17,000 islands. Based on Malay, the long time market language of SE Asia. Many of those different ethnic groups already had their own languages. If it wasn't drop dead simple there was zero likelihood that it would be accepted. Before I came back to Bali for my second visit in '89, I found a Garuda employee in L.A. who gave an hour and a half class one night a week. I took five classes before my trip, and that foundation and carrying a good small Indo/English dictionary with me at all times made it very easy to quickly get up to speed.
I am totally out of touch with free online resources, but know that there are LOTS of them. I just took a very quick look, and this one looks pretty good. As first conversations are sort of culturally scripted in Indonesia, it is very helpful to learn what will be your personal correct answers to predictable everyday interactions, on the hoof. This next one looks very good too, the images help make memorizing them easier.
View attachment 2364

I'm guessing that I won't have quite enough time to look through ALL of these today, but nice to know they are there! If you can steer your kids into really spending 20 minutes a day on this, in a week they will be much more comfortable. In a month they will really be rolling right along, on the road to fluency.

Speaking Indonesian like a first grader and informally is easy. To do it at a professional / formal level can be quite challenging, because you begin dealing with word affixes.

I think the best strategy is to remember each affixed word as its own, instead of a root word and its modifier. English has affixes too (en-, pre-, sub-, -ly, -ness, -ment, etc.) with comparable level of irregularities, and the same strategy applies. You can say enable and encircle, but there’s no embox and entower. There are perhutanan and penghutanan, but nobody says penernakan nor penanian. In theory you can form the words, but in practice it’s just never used.

 

[Puspawarna]

Thanks to Nimbus for "defending the honor," as it were, of Indonesian as a complex, rich language. I know people aren't trying to denigrate the language when they say how easy it is to learn, but it's hard not to feel as though the language is being disrespected, however unintentionally.

In fact, linguists have a much more nuanced view of the language than, "oh, it's a lingua franca, ergo super easy."

Linguists rate languages in terms of how difficult it will be for a native speaker of one language to achieve competency in another. The scale is from 1 to 5, with 5 being the hardest. For native English speakers, Japanese is a 5. But Indonesian is a 3, if I recall correctly (and if I'm misremembering, it's a 4 - it's definitely not on the easier end of the scale.) Many romance languages (though not Portuguese!) are rated in the 1 to 2 range.

To elaborate on Nimbus's point, sure, Indonesian is easier/faster than a lot of languages to learn at BEGINNING levels. The lack of conjugations and tenses means you don't have to waste time on the equivalent of memorizing when to use go versus goes, going, gone or went. Instead, you can quickly learn a few tense markers and move to more interesting new vocabulary. But Indonesian is actually quite tricky for English speakers once you get to higher levels. It's one thing to say "Aku mau ke Sogo" and something else entirely to properly understand and use pe---an affixes correctly.

 

[Puspawarna]

Back to BliGundul's question. (Hey, I just realized I've been misreading his name as "Bill Gundul." I've been thinking of him as "Bald Bill.")

If your daughter hangs on to her Indonesian citizenship, she sounds like she is 80% of the way to being the dream candidate for multinational companies in Indonesia. Years ago, I ran the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia, so I know what I'm talking about (unless things have radically changed, but I doubt it). Western companies want managers that speak English (or Japanese, or German, but we're talking about American firms here) and are culturally relatable to them - but at the same time, they hate the hassle and expense of justifying hiring foreigners. The perfect solution is a de facto American who carries an Indonesian passport. I knew some Indonesian citizens who had been raised in America, and let me tell you, companies DROOLED over them.

One assumes your daughter is at least a little bit culturally American, and you say her English skills are reasonably native speaker level. If I were her parent, I would strongly encourage her to find a way to spend some time in the US. Sure, money may be too tight for you to send her, but where there is a will, there's a way. Perhaps she could get a scholarship to a community college, or work as an au pair for a couple of years? Do you have family members in the US that she could live with for a while?

If she could combine an Indonesian passport with good English skills and the ability to code switch (meaning, act and sound like an Indonesian when in Indonesian settings and like an American when dealing with Americans) she'd be highly marketable. Tha's assuming she's not a lazy fool, but it sounds like she's smart and motivated. The missing piece is that time in the US to cement her pass-for-American skills.

 

[Nimbus]

Thanks to Nimbus for "defending the honor," as it were, of Indonesian as a complex, rich language. I know people aren't trying to denigrate the language when they say how easy it is to learn, but it's hard not to feel as though the language is being disrespected, however unintentionally.

In fact, linguists have a much more nuanced view of the language than, "oh, it's a lingua franca, ergo super easy."

Linguists rate languages in terms of how difficult it will be for a native speaker of one language to achieve competency in another. The scale is from 1 to 5, with 5 being the hardest. For native English speakers, Japanese is a 5. But Indonesian is a 3, if I recall correctly (and if I'm misremembering, it's a 4 - it's definitely not on the easier end of the scale.) Many romance languages (though not Portuguese!) are rated in the 1 to 2 range.

To elaborate on Nimbus's point, sure, Indonesian is easier/faster than a lot of languages to learn at BEGINNING levels. The lack of conjugations and tenses means you don't have to waste time on the equivalent of memorizing when to use go versus goes, going, gone or went. Instead, you can quickly learn a few tense markers and move to more interesting new vocabulary. But Indonesian is actually quite tricky for English speakers once you get to higher levels. It's one thing to say "Aku mau ke Sogo" and something else entirely to properly understand and use pe---an affixes correctly.

The Defense Language Institute puts Indonesian in Category II for American English speakers, where I is the easiest and IV the hardest.

DLI's language guidelines

The Defense Language Institute categorizes languages into four levels of difficulty.

www.ausa.org

I personally don’t feel slighted when people say Indonesian is easy, because I think an easy language signifies a logically structured system, as opposed to one full of irregularities and exceptions due to obsolete historical artifacts. For the most part Indonesian is quite consistent in its pronunciation and grammatical rules, at least more consistent than many other languages (including English).

My only concern is that people feel too confident in their Indonesian and unknowingly make themselves look silly when they speak at a higher level. The vast majority of Indonesians are simply thrilled to hear any foreigner speaking the language, so we’re not about to correct you or even hint that you’re making a mistake, despite you sounding like an elementary school child while speaking to a news reporter on TV.

I probably shared this anecdote before. I came across a pamphlet for an Australian program written in Indonesian. I could understand it after reading it several times, but it felt really off. There was no significant grammatical mistake and no spelling error at all. However, the sentences were structured in a way not taken by native Indonesian speakers. My best guess was a work by an Australian with an academic degree in Indonesian language, but with limited exposure to everyday Indonesian. My point is that it’s not difficult to get the rules right, but not easy to convey your ideas and be perfectly understood at first pass.