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View all search resultsA start, not a settlement
Citizenship is not a favor the state dispenses to useful people. It should be a recognition of a bond that does not expire when it becomes inconvenient.
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Illustration of Indonesian passport (Shutterstock/Rizvisual)
A
fter decades of promises and false starts, Indonesia has finally moved to allow limited dual citizenship for the first time since independence.
The proposal, now tabled before the House of Representatives as a revision to the 2006 Citizenship Law, would grant dual nationality to Indonesian diaspora members whose expertise is deemed important to national development.
Scientists, medical specialists and athletes; the list is narrow by design. Nominations must come from a ministry or state institution. Law Minister Supratman Andi Atgas said it plainly: "It is only granted when the state needs someone. Not just anyone can be nominated."
This is talent acquisition dressed up as a citizenship reform.
Citizenship is not a favor the state dispenses to useful people. It should be a recognition of a bond — of descent, of identity, of the relationship between a person and their homeland — that does not expire when it becomes inconvenient.
Indonesia has spent decades refusing that recognition to millions of its own people, citing national security, divided loyalty and the rule of law. Now it is prepared to offer a version of it, but only on its own terms and only to those it has already decided it needs.
Principles must come first, and the principle is clear. Indonesia follows citizenship by descent. If dual nationality is going to be expanded, the first claimants should not be state-selected scientists but children of mixed marriages, who have an Indonesian parent and a legal claim under the country's own constitutional framework.
