Immigration Officials Say Tourist Behavior Is Improving In Bali

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Indonesia’s Director General of Immigration, Silmy Karim, visited Bali this week.

The Head of the Immigration Office shared his insights on the ongoing situation regarding badly behaved tourists on the island.

Speaking to reporters, Karim stressed how important it is for all parties to continue to work together to promote high-quality tourism and attract well-behaved tourists to Bali.

He noted that educational and awareness campaigns, along with the existing cross-department efforts, are moving the needle on the issue. 

Continued progress, he suggests, is in the coordination between the Department of Immigration, national government, provincial government, and even village-level governance on the island. 

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Karim shared his vision that with an increase in high-quality foreigners coming to Bali, more economic benefits will surely follow suit.

He wants to see tourism as a mechanism for positive social and economic change in Bali, not the other way around. 

The Director General of Immigration also took the opportunity to call on local authorities in Bali to continue to refine their communication and cooperation in order to preempt and avoid any poor behavior by tourists. This, he says, can be achieved through greater supervision of tourists across the island. 

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Director General Karim also gave his backing to village and regency-level authorities to hold foreigners who have been found to violate local rules and laws to account. 

The Head of Indonesia’s Immigration Offices was in Bali to place the first stone at the construction site for the new Singaraja Immigration Office in North Bali.

There are around 2,500 foreigners living in the Singaraja catchment area who will be better served by the new facilities.

The Singaraja Immigration Offices are in charge of immigration matters for Buleleng Regency, Karangasem Regency, and Jimbaran Regency. 

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Director General Karim also revealed that Indonesia Immigration has created a database of badly behaved foreigners.

This database contains every violation by foreigners that has been formally reported and recorded.

He said that this database will be used to inform the decision-making process for if and when foreigners who have been found to break the law wish to re-enter the country, apply for residency permits or even try to set up businesses or make investments.

Director General Karim noted that not all the reported violation by foreigners in Bali are an immediate immigration issue. Nevertheless, his teams are on hand to provide support for other departments, such as the police or transportation offices, should they so need it.

He explained, “Not all of [violations] are immigration issues. There are issues of public order, traffic violations, and others. This must be coordinated. If you enter the immigration area, we will definitely take firm action,”

Data revealed by the Technology, Information, and Communication (TIKIM) office within the Department of Immigration show that over 4,000 formal reports were filed against foreigners in Bali during the first quarter of 2023. 

The Head of TIKIM at the Ngurah Rai Immigration Office, Sandro Bobby Raymon Limbong, confirmed that 4,366 official complaints had been submitted to his teams between January and the end of April 2023. This resulted in 85 deportations. 

Limbong reiterated that there are many ways in which residents or concerned tourists can report their observations to the authorities.

Officials across Indonesia, especially in Bali, have been keen to establish a ‘no wrong door’ style system for people to file reports of badly behaved tourists. 

This harks back to Director General Karim’s call for a synergistic approach to ensuring high-quality tourism prevails in Bali.

Earlier in the year, many local residents, tired of feeling like their calls for support were being ignored by authorities, took to posting videos of foreigners behaving badly.

These kinds of ‘caught in the act’ videos went viral time and time again, a move that many people felt was worth the risk of tarnishing Bali’s public image in order to create progress.