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here is a disturbing message behind our front page headline on Monday that read, '€œRI cuts back on expat workers'€. It wrongly implies that this is good news for Indonesia and that this is a reflection of the country'€™s success in phasing out foreign workers and giving more job opportunities to Indonesian nationals.

The senior manpower ministry official quoted in the news story suggested that the downward trend would continue next year and that the government was preparing more regulations to limit expatriate employment ahead of the opening up of the Indonesian labor market under the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) beginning at the end of 2015.

Indonesia'€™s attitude toward the hiring of foreign labor follows the protectionist and xenophobic tendency that now prevails in the economic policies of the government. But labor is not like the automotive industry, where there may be some justifications, if only temporary, for protectionism.

Doing so is taking a myopic view of the labor situation in the country. And such defensive attitude will backfire on Indonesia, if it has not already.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) published a study in May that suggested Indonesia was already facing an acute shortage of mid-level managers and professionals, and that the situation was only going to get worse. It estimated that in 2020, Indonesia will need 15 million middle managers to run its corporations and the economy, and yet the country can only supply 10 million.

Still want to celebrate the reduction of expatriate managers? And have we not learned anything from two Indonesian Diaspora congresses? The fact that there are some 2 million Indonesians and their families living abroad working as professionals, engineers and managers is testament that Indonesians are as good as anyone else in the world. If they can compete with the best in the world in the US, Australia, Europe and Asia, then they should be able to compete in their own home turf without government protections.

Some Indonesians working abroad may represent a brain drain, but that is all the more reason why Indonesia should alter its job market into one with a more global outlook and less inward-looking, as it is today.

Instead of further tightening the rules for hiring foreigners, Indonesia should welcome them, knowing that Indonesian workers also have access to job markets abroad. The bottom line is that we need the presence of expatriate workers to fill the acute shortage at home. The government would do much better in mandating the transfer of technology and know-how from every expatriate hired.

In the long-run, the government, the private sector and educational institutions should prepare more Indonesians to produce managers, technicians, engineers and professionals that Indonesia will need through more education and training facilities.

The government should have more self-esteem about the ability of Indonesians abroad and at home in competing for jobs. Much of this inferiority complex comes from the destructive nationalist sentiments in managing the economy. Stop it, for our own sake.