The Directorate General of Immigration, Silmy Karim signed an immigration cooperation agreement with the Australian Department of Home Affairs (DHA) in Jakarta on Monday, 23rd of March, 2023. This collaboration is a step to prepare innovations around digitalization in the service system and immigration law enforcement.
“Today, I signed an agreement with the Australian Department of Home Affairs represented by the Associate Secretary for Immigration, Ms Stephanie Foster and staff. We are following up on several things, such as forming a technical working group on information technology development to facilitate the exchange of information regarding the system architecture and immigration innovations of the two countries,” said Silmy after a meeting with the Australian Immigration delegation in the Office of the Director General of Immigration, Kuningan, South Jakarta.
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On the other hand, the Australian Department of Home Affairs considered it as an important thing for further cooperation to strengthen border security between the two countries. Several other points of the agreement contained in the cooperation agreement are Smart Gates access for Indonesian E-Passport holders, immigration document forensics to identify forgery on passports, border operations centre, Airlines Liaison Officer Program, management of illegal migration, prevention of transnational crimes to Work Visas and Vacation.
Silmy also revealed that Immigration is implementing systemic improvements to support accelerating innovation, making it easier for the community. Regulations and system infrastructure for the implementation of several new types of visas are also being finalized. The new types of visas include golden visas, sports visas, diaspora visas and other visas.
“Many of the lessons we learned after our visit to Australia in order to strengthen our cooperation last month included databases of foreigners, alert list data for prevention and deterrence, and various other lessons. The Directorate General of Immigration has stopped implementing visa-free visits to 168 countries and imposing visas on arrival. This is a lesson given by the Australian Immigration, who impose visas on everyone who wants to enter Australian Territory so that immigration problems caused by foreigners can be minimized,” he explained.
On this occasion, the Associate Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs Australia, Stephanie Foster provided input regarding Indonesia’s border security. Australian Immigration suggests that Indonesian Immigration can check as early as possible on foreigners who will enter Indonesian territory long before the person concerned reaches Indonesian territory.
“We have responded well to the agreement proposal from Australia as a measure to contain foreigners who are not beneficial to Indonesia as a form of pushing the border forward to guard the borders of the two countries so that cases of illegal migrants can be minimized,” said Silmy.
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