Human smuggling rampant at airports

Filipinos normally would say, ay mali; Americans, I goofed. Not the one and only Rene Saguisag. Joseph Estrada’s lawyer pleaded lapsus calami in hurriedly filing Wednesday an amendment to his impeachment complaint against eight Supreme Court justices.

It turned out that the title of Saguisag’s complaint listed eight justices, but the text named only six. He thus asked the House of Representatives to accept a revised Page 1 to include Justices Jose Vitug and Leonardo Quisumbing to the names of Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Acting Chief Justice Josue Bellosillo, and Justices Artemio Panganiban, Reynato Puno, Antonio Carpio and Renato Corona.

Lapsus calami is defined in Quibuyen v. Court of Appeals 9 SCRA 741, 745, 746 (1963) as "clerical, harmless, technical or formal errors that have caused no prejudice or substantial injustice, which lapses creep from time to time into the work of busy men of the law in an uncertain, imperfect world."

Is lapsus calami also the reason why still two other justices are not included in the complaint to make an even ten? Like all the rest, Justices Consuelo Ynares-Santiago and Angelina Sandoval-Gutierrez had authorized Davide to swear in Gloria Arroyo as President on Jan. 20, 2001. They also were among those who voted 13-0 on Mar. 3 and Apr. 5, 2001 on the legitimacy of Mrs. Arroyo’s Presidency. Why, they even issued separate concurring opinions on it.

Of course, the two justices were Estrada appointees. Which makes the complaint as stale as lumang calamay.

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Two TNTs (tago nang tago) were bragging at a Texas jail, a Filipino and a Mexican. To end it, the Pinoy sneered at the Chicano, "At least I flew in on a jet plane; you came here in a tomato crate."

Our Pinoy may have taken a fancy trans-Pacific flight, but he landed in jail just the same, like thousands of others in America and Europe. Some are victims of illegal recruiters, and end up as TNTs because they didn’t have real jobs after all. Others knew what they were going into, and even paid dearly for fake documents in order to strike new lives in lands of milk and honey.

In 1997 the International Labor Organization listed 4.6 million overseas Filipino workers with regular work status and 1.7 million with irregular papers. Two years later the Department of Foreign Affairs estimated that of seven million OFWs, a good three million had no papers from the government. The Interpol said recently that the number grows by 300,000 to 450,000 per year in Western Europe alone. In its 32nd European Regional Conference in The Netherlands last May 16, the Interpol noted more than half a million smuggled asylum seekers in the continent. "Without targetting people smuggling networks and their infrastructure, there can be no sustainable results," it concluded.

Philippine airport authorities acknowledge that human smuggling has become rampant in their jurisdictions. Manila International Airport general manager Edgardo Manda says it could be worst in his turf, where he estimates 10 undocumented job seekers to be sneaking out each day.

Airports have become the targets of choice of human smuggling syndicates. The government has cracked down hard on illegal recruiters, with hundreds arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. Syndicates have thus turned to willing victims, persons in dire need of jobs abroad and would do anything to get there, even if illegally.

The syndicates have connections in government. In 1998 the foreign office reported that 4,200 blank passports were stolen in Isabela. Another 1,240 disappeared from the vaults in Lucena City. Not one was recovered. Some of the passports could have been used by Chinese nationals who swim from ships to enter the Philippines. But it is likely that most were used for Filipinos sneaking out through airports.

The syndicates also operate travel agencies as fronts. The Italian embassy has complained that the agencies can easily prepare fake documents like bank certificates, land titles, work permits and school diplomas. In 1999, 23 applicants for tourist visas were found to have paid P200,000 each for bogus papers.

The syndicates have international connections too. Only recently, several Chinese nationals flew into Manila for a few days’ rest, then used the airports to enter Japan and Canada with fake or tampered documents. They were caught in the destinations. Many more presumably got off.

Manda suspects that most of the human smuggling is done in Terminal-2. The configuration of Terminal-1 makes it almost impossible to sneak a passenger through airport security, airline and immigration check, and onto the plane. Terminal-2 is looser. So he has assigned airport personnel to check travel documents right at the airline counters. He also has discussed with immigration officers ways to sniff out fake documents. Undervocer patrols and surveillance in the terminal’s many corridors are now stricter. Ground handling personnel from four firms have been required to wear color-coded, reflectorized uniforms. Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza, a former Philippine National Police chief, is exploring ways to unify the PNP Aviation Security Command with security personnel in international airports. Foreign consulates are being asked to brief airport authorities on the modus operandi of fake document syndicates.

Human smuggling is a malady of poverty. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Hundreds of thousands more lost farm incomes from the El Niño droughts of 1998 and 2002. Many of them willingly pay P250,000 to P500,000 just to be sneaked out of airports.

Manda is treading on dangerous ground, and he knows it. With the billions of pesos that the syndicates make from human smuggling, he says it’s not far-fetched that they would have him killed for fighting them.

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Catch Sapol ni Jarius Bondoc, Saturdays, 8 a.m., on DWIZ (882-AM).

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