Thread: Social Visa - is there a limit on how many...?

A friend of mine with an Aussie passport has been in Bali for many years and does the regular 6 month visa run using various destinations. Last week she was in Kuala Lumpur, and when she went back to pick up the visa, the immigration guy she was dealing with said something like "you have been using social visas very frequently, what are you doing there?" Then went on to say he would not give the social visa - only a 30-day tourist visa - or nothing. So stuck there in a queue, needing to make a decision, she went with the 30-day visa and is now wondering - what next?

Has anyone heard of similar cases? Was this just one immigration official in a bad mood - or could it be part of a policy to tighten up? What is the best plan now - just go to another embassy/consulate and hope for a better guy, or use agents in Singapore, or what? How good are their computer systems? Will the next guy she deals with see details of this guys action in their on-line data - or will the visas be in the passport be all that he sees?

Also, this 30-day visa that she got just looks like the usual 60 day visa - so maybe it can be extended?

Has anyone heard of similar cases? Was this just one immigration official in a bad mood - or could it be part of a policy to tighten up?

Quite possibly.

What is the best plan now - just go to another embassy/consulate and hope for a better guy, or use agents in Singapore, or what?

Worth a try. I used Social Visas, on and off, for maybe 10 years without any problems.

How good are their computer systems? Will the next guy she deals with see details of this guys action in their on-line data - or will the visas be in the passport be all that he sees?

Maybe, maybe not. Very hard to answer categorically.

...the immigration guy she was dealing with said something like "you have been using social visas very frequently, what are you doing there?"

This kind of question must surface sooner or later, although I've never been asked it.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that the official in question is fishing for some extra cash. What to do? Offer him/her something under the table and hope for the best? Insist upon speaking with someone higher up in that particular Consulate/Embassy? Might work and might cost a bit more.

Try an agent in Singapore, never forgetting that whichever office "grants" your friend a visa, that doesn't guarantee that it will be accepted upon arrival in Indonesia. Usually, no problem, but perhaps things are changing.

A similar situation exists for people on endless Business Visas. Questions might be asked somewhere down the line. I don't know if the line has arrived yet, or not.

As for the effectiveness of computerised systems in Indonesia, again it's hard to say. Only today, I had to be photographed and electronically fingerprinted for my Kitas. The fingerprinting part went OK until it got to the little finger on my right hand. It just wouldn't scan properly. Took about five minutes in total, swabbing the scanner itself, swabbing that finger on my shirt, on and on. I joked about it with the officials - "Maybe that finger isn't a real one, or it's some kind of leyak phenomenon". They all laughed and finally got it to work properly.

I didn't have the strength to ask them if their version of Windows XP was a legal one, or their scanner software, for that matter. Let alone asking them the last time they'd scanned their computers with up-to-date legal anti-virus, etc, programmes...

:?:

Originally Posted by JohnnyCool

Only today, I had to be photographed and electronically fingerprinted

Me too, around 1 o'clock, although the guy doing my prints was in no mood for any sort of joke, he was kind of a grumpy prick actually.

Me too, around 1 o'clock, although the guy doing my prints was in no mood for any sort of joke, he was kind of a grumpy prick actually.

One o'clock? Pushing the envelope there a bit.

I always try to get there well before 12 o'clock. If I blow it, there could be all the "it's lunch time, time to rest" stuff. How much energy does it really take to hold several million Rupiah?

Your "print guy" may have had his lunch break interrupted. (Working "overtime" fixing the scanner.")

Or he was tired from laughing too much at my lame jokes earlier. Possibly both.

Any idea how much those people earn each month? Thirty or forty bucks a month! Even double that would be slave wages in anything other than a turd-world country.

Sitting around like a stale bucket of prawns waiting for my turn, an Asian girl, (not Indonesian), next to me asked me what my name was. Out of the blue. I told her and the "conversation" ended abruptly.

A couple of Chinese hovered over my shoulder, (no seats left), and I couldn't help but hear their soft, whispered tirade regarding the lack of air-con, overall inefficiency, and whatnot.

I was tempted to ask them if they'd ever been to India. God help us all if Indonesia starts getting its rocks off with main-frame bureaucracy.

:D

The visa agency that I used told me to arrive at 1...maybe next time I will go earlier.

I was lucky enough to sit next to some crazy French guy who has previously asked me for hotel money on Kuta beach, saying that if no one gave him any money he would sleep on the beach. I didn't give him any. He seemed to have all of his clothes with him in 2 small bags and wouldn't stop talking about how he knows George Clooney and all sorts of other nonsensical things. The young Balinese kids next to me said they had seen him there (kantor imigrasi) before and he is really off. Luckily once the conversation switched to Bahasa Indonesia with them he got bored and wandered off to find new people to tell his stories to.

Never dull at that place.