Indonesia's immigration service is shifting the monitoring of foreigners onto technology: artificial intelligence, facial recognition at passport control, and a shared digital database available to inspectors in the field. The service promises that within a few years it will handle 70 percent of the agency's work.
Facial recognition is already in place at passport control at Ngurah Rai Airport, and during raids inspectors check documents against a single digital database right on the spot, without sending a request to the office.
A separate part of the plan is a "digital fence": drones over the country's land borders, which run 3,111 kilometers, and over the trails used to bypass border checkpoints. Bali has no land border, so on the island the most visible piece of the new technology is facial recognition at the airport. The service is folding all of this into a development plan running to 2045 and is setting up a dedicated unit for it that will design the technical architecture.
While the technology is being rolled out, checks continue in the old way — through raids. Since April the "Dharma Dewata" patrol has been operating across the island, with more than a hundred officers; in August, over the course of a week, they checked 66 foreigners from 27 countries.
Immigration officers are also assigned to individual villages: they explain the rules to residents and, together with the village administration and elders, look into which foreigners are living nearby and what they are doing. This started in the spring with three villages, and by May the number under their care had grown to twelve — in the north, west, and east of the island.
Two issues come up most often with foreigners: working on the wrong type of visa and an expired stay permit. Legal Indonesia can help with paperwork or with extending a visa.
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