Kenneth Yeung gives a red card to Indonesia’s current plan for dual citizenship.
Indonesia’s proposed dual-citizenship scheme is causing resentment among mixed-marriage families: why should a foreign ‘talent’, such as a footballer, get two nationalities whereas a child with an Indonesian parent loses that right upon reaching adulthood?
When expatriates put down roots in Indonesia and marry an Indonesian, their children can hold dual citizenship, but only until age 18, when they must choose either Indonesian citizenship or that of their foreign parent, and then finalise the paperwork by 21.
The government is now proposing to change the citizenship law to allow dual citizenship for selected foreigners deemed especially talented in sport, technology, and other fields.
There are at least two public reasons for this policy: to improve Indonesia’s sporting prowess, especially in football and the Olympics, and counter the ‘brain drain’ in which some of Indonesia’s brightest young minds end up taking foreign citizenship so they can enjoy higher salaries, better careers, and a healthier quality of life.
Another likely reason, less publicly promoted, is to avoid the embarrassment of Indonesian officials being dismissed from public office for holding two nationalities. A prominent case involved Arcandra Taher, an oil and gas engineer, who was appointed minister of energy and mineral resources in July 2016, but dismissed just 20 days later after it emerged he had obtained US citizenship in 2012. He later renounced his US citizenship, had his Indonesian citizenship reinstated, and became a deputy minister.
Under the proposed changes, exceptional athletes and technocrats could hold dual citizenship, subject to government approval, although the precise guidelines and criteria remain unclear.
The Indonesian Mixed-Marriage Society (Perkumpulan Masyarakat Perkawinan Campuran Indonesia or PerCa Indonesia), which campaigns for greater rights for spouses and children, has criticised the selective approach as subjective, discriminatory, and transactional. PerCa Chairwoman Rulita Anggraini argues that if Indonesia is going to extend dual citizenship to adults, it should first do so for people who already have an Indonesian parent; otherwise, it risks creating a two-tier system under the law.
‘Chinese’ Indonesians
To see how Indonesia got to this stage, it’s necessary to look back at the thorny history of dual citizenship in Indonesia.
In 1945, when preparing for independence from Dutch colonial rule and Japanese wartime occupation, the nation’s founders wanted citizenship to represent an exclusive allegiance to the new Indonesian state. Under colonial law, some Chinese and Arab communities had overlapping nationality, which the founding fathers did not want to perpetuate.
Initially, ethnic Chinese in Indonesia could effectively hold two nationalities. That’s because China’s nationality law treated people of Chinese descent as Chinese nationals regardless of where they were born, whereas Indonesia classified many locally born Chinese as Indonesian nationals.
Indonesia and China tackled this problem through the 1955 Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty, which, despite its name, required people who held both nationalities to choose one. Moving at an astonishing administrative speed, Indonesia approved the treaty in 1958, implemented it through a 1959 government regulation, and brought it into force in 1960. The resulting choice process ran from 1960 to 1962, with more than two-thirds of eligible ethnic Chinese choosing Indonesian citizenship.
But after Indonesia-China relations collapsed in 1967, then-president Soeharto’s New Order government axed the treaty in 1969. This meant that those whose citizenship status had not been settled could no longer use the treaty’s choice option. Instead, they faced a much tougher bureaucratic path to establish or acquire Indonesian citizenship. Some from lower-income communities never managed to attain citizenship, effectively becoming stateless due to the discriminatory system.
Follow the father
Meanwhile, children of Indonesian–foreign marriages could not hold both parents’ nationalities. Under the 1958 Citizenship Law, nationality followed the father: a child with an Indonesian father was Indonesian, while a child recorded as having a foreign father would generally be a foreign national, even if the mother was Indonesian. Such children could later apply for Indonesian citizenship, but did not automatically acquire it through their Indonesian mother.
For many expatriate men married to Indonesians, this meant their newborn children had to be registered as foreigners and subjected to the annual bureaucratic hassle of residency renewals, police registration, and other paperwork. Conversely, for expatriate women married to Indonesian men, their children were automatically Indonesian through their fathers. If these foreign mothers managed to obtain their own nationality for their children, the children were by law required to relinquish their Indonesian citizenship.
The post-Soeharto reform era, which kicked off in 1998, included demands for greater rights for children of Indonesian-foreign married couples. I attended a discussion in Jakarta in October 2005 at which Sophia Latjuba, then one of Indonesia’s biggest female celebrities, spoke about the difficulties faced by mixed-marriage families in registering their children. Also present was Golkar Party legislator Slamet Effendi Yusuf, who was cheered for promising that the House of Representatives would pursue dual citizenship for children of mixed marriages.
Sure enough, the Citizenship Law was revised in 2006, introducing the limited dual nationality system for children of mixed marriages. And now, 20 years later, we have another round of proposed citizenship changes, although these seem less about reform or equality and more about elite interests.
By the numbers
Current data on the number of children of Indonesian-foreign parents is not easily available, but in June 2022, the government reported that 13,092 children born to Indonesian–foreign parents were registered as holding limited dual citizenship.
More recently, the Law Ministry reported there had been 712 applications from children of mixed marriages to choose Indonesian citizenship during 2024–2026. It’s not clear whether this indicates that most eligible young adults favour Indonesian citizenship.
Many young Indonesians, especially those from more affluent families, have embraced the meme “kabur aja dulu”, which loosely translates as “just get out now”.
Some children of mixed marriage families who leave Indonesia to study abroad say their lives have greatly improved, so they have little desire to return to Indonesia for work or public service. The notion of moving back has especially soured after seeing the treatment of Nadiem Makarim, who studied in the US, returned to Indonesia and founded Gojek, became education minister, and was this year sentenced to 10 years in jail in a case that remains under appeal.
“I love Indonesia and my Indonesian family, but Australia provides so many more opportunities,” says a young woman, who was born and raised in Indonesia as a dual citizen. “I wish I could always be a dual citizen so I could more freely visit my Indonesian family and do business there, but Indonesia doesn’t make it easy.”
Conversely, some children of mixed marriages opt to retain Indonesian citizenship to remain closer to family members, especially when both parents are based in Indonesia. An American expat who has lived in Jakarta for several decades, married to an Indonesian, has three children, all now over 18. “All three have chosen to retain Indonesian citizenship because Indonesia is home, is family,” he says.
“But the #KaburAjaDulu phenomenon is not over. Some of their mixed friends left—some by choice, some not. But why should they have to make that choice? Aren’t they better off—and more beneficial to Indonesia—when they have both [citizenships]?” he asks.
“By now endorsing selective dual nationality, the government recognises the benefit of foreign experience and knowledge, or sports skills, to Indonesia. How better than to let mixed young adults use a foreign citizenship to gain that and then an Indonesian citizenship to bring it back? The demographic dividend Indonesia is counting on for 2045 is ‘use it or lose it’. Why rely on senior experts when Indonesia’s future depends on its young people?” he adds.
If Indonesia does extend dual citizenship rights for children of Indonesian-foreign marriages into adulthood, it should not fear they have become tainted with dangerous foreign ideas that are incompatible with Indonesian values. After all, not every aspect of Indonesia’s political and institutional culture, such as systemic corruption and authoritarian tendencies, is worth preserving.