Immigration bureau to investigate alleged syndicates that help foreigners work in PH

Bureau of Immigration office in Manila. Photo: Jonathan Cellona/ABS-CBN News
Bureau of Immigration office in Manila. Photo: Jonathan Cellona/ABS-CBN News

Are there people working at the Bureau of Immigration (BI) who illegally help foreign nationals work in the Philippines? After a labor group said that a syndicate was working at the BI, the bureau said today that it will conduct an investigation into the allegation.

In an interview today on the CNN Philippines news show The Source, BI spokeswoman Dana Sandoval said that they will investigate the allegations. “We will look into that. That’s really a cause of concern….In the past, we have encountered a similar issue.”

Sandoval was reacting to a prior CNN interview with the spokesman of the Associated Labor Unions-TUCP (ALU-TUCP) Allan Tanjusay where he said that some unscrupulous immigration officials would help foreigners enter the Philippines to work here.

“There’s a guide from the immigration department who would be contacted by these workers so that they can enter our airports and seaports,” Tanjusay said.

“These Chinese workers pay their contacts depending on how many people they are able to help enter the country. You can call them a syndicate — these officers of the Bureau of Immigration who are operating in our airports and seaports.”

The allegations arose as some people have expressed worry that too many Chinese nationals have been working in the Philippines, even in blue-collar industries such as construction. In fact, ALU-TUCP released a video late last month of a construction site where Chinese nationals were working. Interviews conducted by ABS-CBN News prove that some of the workers were indeed from China. 

The Department of Labor and Employment’s (DOLE) Assistant Secretary Benjo Benavidez said the workers in the video are holders of special workers’ permits, which the BI issues. Sandoval said, however, that such permits do not allow foreigners to engage in blue-collar work.

Commenting on the controversial video, she said: “Definitely these are construction workers. With our without permits that (working in construction) is not allowed. There might have been misrepresentation when they applied for their permits. That’s a deportable offense — they can be deported for that.”

President Rodrigo Duterte has refused to kick out illegal Chinese workers because he believes that China might retaliate and do the same to Filipino workers living there. The same was echoed by his spokesperson Salvador Panelo, but his claim was later rejected by the Chinese embassy in Manila.

Yet Panelo and Duterte are not the only government officials taking the side of Chinese workers. The country’s special envoy to China, broadcaster Ramon Tulfo, said last month that Chinese workers are preferred here because they are more hardworking than Filipinos. Tulfo was widely slammed for his comments but he refused to apologize.

DOLE Secretary Silvestre Bello III said at a Senate hearing in February that about half of the more than 169,000 Alien Employment Permits issued by their department from 2015 – 2018 were given to Chinese nationals.



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