Hello folks, please help..

I heard you were the guys to come to with this so here goes...

I am a British citizen living and working in Medan on my third consecutive KITAS..my wife is Indonesian and from Medan.
We got married in church in November 2004 but have never had 'Sipil' marriage so I understand are not 'legally married'..we do have a church marriage certificate and a marriage affidavit from the U.K. Consul, however.
The reason we have never had our Civil marriage is because we applied for my daughter's (2 and a half years old) and son's (9 months old) birth certificates with my wife as status 'belum nikah', to avoid the resulting costly KITAS per year..both of our children have Indonesian WNI birth certificates, but with my surname as their surname. There is NO DOUBT that they are my children, by the way! They don't have passports yet.

Now that dual nationality status is a reality not fantasy I would really like to undo any harm we may have done by taking this route in the past and apply for our children's dual nationality now, and also get 'actually married'!
Can it be done or are we likely to get all sorts of stick for not 'having done it properly' in the first place?
If it is viable how much should we expect to pay?

My only excuses are that it is not always easy to get the real story or reliable information in Medan and we kind of gave up at the time in a mess of confused information..in my defence we are not at all the only family in this situation..so any solution will be helping a lot of people..thanks in advance!

ezekiel

How can you get "dual nationality" and why would you need it ? - your children are already Indonesian , therefore they don't need anything from Indo. Your grief is not with Indo, rather with the UK when/ if you try and get them in. I think if you search here , you will find the document flow posted, together with the required documents. You may well find it easier and cheaper to do this in the UK , especially with the old child where the application has to go before HAK/HAM.

Your youngest kid would have whistled it with no trouble if he had an English birth certificate in the first place, and from what I gather the work in obtaining a KITAS for the kids and having them legal from day one is a walk in the park compared to what you will have to do for dual citizenship.

Ok, thanks Cap..probably should have mentioned that we are considering moving back to England for the start of our daughter's primary education and would therefore have to apply for visas not only for my wife but for our kids (or claim dual nationality for them beforehand). I take the point that there will not be much stress from Indonesian Gvmt and that it's the U.K. that will probably cause problems.

cheers

If you wish to PM me the I will send you what you need to progress things - if it is any use.

PS, make sure you take plenty of Materai back with you.

as far as i know the dual citizenship for the transnational child can be applied in legal married and they will lose the dual citizen ship when the 18.

even i heard from a friends who live in US, she can not apply dual citizenship for her kids even she do legally married cos they living outside indonesia... its need kartu keluarga .. and how come has kartu keluarga if not stay in indonesia..

even the kids who born in illegal married can not applies birth certificate because to applies the birth certificate need Kartu Nikah which KUA released it ( legally )

Yes you can outside Indo but jump through hoops for yg lahir sebelum Sept '06. Sawise iki nggak sulit.

Basketmaker children with dubious history and parentage need not apply.

Of course you keep you KTP and KK up to date now that it is all computerised don't you?

capt. ... i heard its still really tricky proses with immigration ... i guess old styles still used .. slipery if theres money !!