Thirty-five-year-old Bangladeshi Omar Syarif has lived in Indonesia for more than 13 years now.

Despite being stateless and an illegal alien, Omar has fared much better than the Tom Hanks character Victor Navorski in the film Terminal, in which he had to live in an airport because he was stateless.

Omar has everything to live for here: an Indonesian wife, a child, a house and a job as a helper at the immigration detention center in Kalideres, West Jakarta.

"I don't want to go back to Bangladesh, although I miss my family there very much," he tells The Jakarta Post in halting Indonesian near the center.

At one point, Omar was detained at the center, and his access to the outside world limited.

But after years in detention, Omar eventually gained the trust of officials at the center who then gave him a job and a place to stay nearby.

Omar says he left Bangladesh to escape the conflicts ravaging the country, and came to Indonesia in the hopes of being able to go to Australia from here.

However, after being stranded here, Omar gave up his dream of getting to Australia.

There are thousands of stories similar to Omar's here, where immigrants from restive countries learn to embrace Indonesia as a fallback from their broken dreams of getting to Australia.

Omar's colleague from Bangladesh, Faroek, 49, also plans to stay for good in Indonesia after spending a year working at the detention center.

"I'm just waiting for my *Indonesian* wife, who is now working in Singapore," he says.

"I can't go there because I have no papers, and I don't want to go back home either."

Jawat, 18, from Afghanistan, was detained by authorities in Medan, North Sumatra, a year ago. He says he has already given up on any hope of living in Australia, and would rather stay in Indonesia than go back to his war-torn country.

"I didn't intend to enter Indonesia," he says.

"I was in Malaysia with other *Afghan* refugees when our broker there blindfolded us and threw us in a boat we thought was heading to Australia.

"However, when we took off the blindfolds, we realized we were in Indonesia," he goes on. "We were heading to Jakarta, to the UNHCR office, when we got caught."

There are an estimated 6,000 illegal immigrants living in Indonesia, the immigration office says, but official records list only 1,897 since August last year.

"More than half *the estimated 6,000* will likely remain here for good because the UNHCR couldn't find third countries willing to take them in," says immigration office spokesman Maroloan J. Baringbing.

"Those who can't get refugee status from the UNHCR will be difficult to deport, because their embassies here won't acknowledge them, or else they won't have legal papers.

"So they're stuck here for good."

Illegal migrants in Indonesia without UNHCR-recognized refugee status are held by the immigration office in its 13 detention centers across the country for deportation, which in most cases takes at least six months.

The government pays for their meals - about Rp 25,000 (US$2.60) a day on each detainee - and for the detention center workers.

Baringbing says the centers, with a maximum capacity to hold 1,000 detainees, are overcrowded, holding 1,400 migrants.

Immigrants recognized by the UNHCR as refugees are then taken care of by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Foreign Ministry until the UNHCR can find countries willing to host them.

During that time, the refugees are accommodated by the IOM in houses, apartments and hotels throughout the country, where they can spend years in waiting.

"There's no limit on the length of stay for the refugees *in Indonesia* until we can find a country willing to take them in," say a UNHCR official speaking on condition of anonymity.

A source at the immigration office says the housing is heavily subsidized by the Australian government, functioning more or less as secret shelters.

Besides the widely known shelter in Bogor, West Java, neither the IOM nor the UNHCR were willing to disclose the locations of their other shelters.

IOM spokeswoman Jihan Labetubun and UNHCR spokeswoman Anita Restu both refused to comment on the issue.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah says the secrecy on the part of the agencies is regrettable.

He adds they have never reported to the ministry on the existence or location of the shelters.

"As international institutions operating in Indonesia, they must inform us about the location of such shelters," Faizasyah says.

Additional reporting by Apriadi Gunawan in Medan and Fadli in Batam

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