BI grants 5,000 Indons certificates of registration

DAVAO CITY — At least 5,000 Indonesians have been granted alien certificates of registration (ACRs) a year after the Bureau of Immigration launched a registration campaign for the estimated 10,000 Indonesians illegally staying in Southern Mindanao.

"We have been working on the registration of the Indonesians who have been living in that part of the country. We went around so they could register and so far, we have reached almost one-half of the estimated number of Indonesians in the area," said Benjamin Lao, Southern Mindanao immigration head.

The ACRs would lengthen the stay of the qualified Indonesians in the country, he said.

Lao said the remaining unregistered Indonesians were actually not qualified because they were not born in the Philippines .

"One important qualification for the ACR is for them to be born in the Philippines or else they could not be issued any ACR at all," Lao told The STAR.

Hundreds of Indonesians started settling in Southern Mindanao as early as the 1930s when they crossed by boat from the East Indonesian islands of Sangihuer Talaud, Miangas and Marori to the coastal areas of Sarangani and South Cotabato.

Immigration has been one of the important aspects of the existing border patrol cooperation between the two countries, particularly with the continued influx of Indonesians to Sarangani and Balut islands.

Lt. Gen. Rodolfo Obaniana, chief of the Armed Forces Eastern Mindanao Command, who heads the country’s delegation to the Philippines-Indonesia joint border committee, emphasized the importance of immigration processes in maintaining security in the border area.

Obaniana said he would make sure that the identified border patrol stations are properly manned by the agencies concerned under the joint border patrol mechanism with Indonesia.

Indonesian vice-consul Bambang Gunawan said that aside from those in South Cotabato and Sarangani, at least 50 other Indonesian families are residing in the town of Gov. Generoso in Davao Oriental.

"The ones in Gov. Generoso have been there for a long time. And most members of their families were actually born there," Gunawan said.

Lao said the number of Indonesians who have been granted their ACRs has reached at least 5,000 because of the socialized scheme that the immigration bureau has implemented.

"We have brought down the registration fee to a much lower rate to accommodate as many of those Indonesians as possible," Lao said.

He said these Indonesians have become very much Filipino in their way of life.

"In fact, you can no longer tell that they are Indonesians because they now look and act like Filipinos," he said.