Tourist off-loadings still raging at airports

More and more city and town mayors are becoming insensitive to the rights of commuters passing through their locales. They arbitrarily close down segments of national (meaning, everybody’s) roads to give way to local events. Rerouted to side streets, traffic snarls for hours till the finish of beauty contests, band concerts or religious processions. Un-forewarned, commuters traversing to and from adjacent provinces are inconvenienced. The malady recurs nationwide during Undas, Christmas, the Santacruzan in May, and town or barangay fiestas practically every given day.

Since local execs are unmindful of outsiders’ right to unimpeded road access, there oughta be a law.

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On the related right to travel, here’s good news. Another high official has expressed displeasure with the discriminatory off-loading of departing Filipino tourists at international airports. Vice President Jejomar Binay has asked the Bureau of Immigration to justify its arbitrary barring of provincials from leaving the country. This follows the filing by Rep. Rufus Rodriguez (Cagayan de Oro City) of a resolution to look into mounting complaints of abuses by immigration men against Filipino travelers. Hopefully their combined pressure would make the BI fight human traffickers, but not at the cost of social bias.

The Office of the Vice President has asked the BI for its legal basis in stopping tourists from leaving just because of their looks. Authorities actually are on the alert for undocumented overseas workers, mostly trafficked, who leave on tourist visas. By way of profiling, those who look or sound promdi (provincial or poor) are accosted at airport immigration counters. There they are demanded proof of capability to travel abroad, such as foreign currency, hotel reservations or tour vouchers. Some are even made to produce documents that tourists do not normally carry around, like income tax returns, bankbooks or employment certificates. Those who fail to do so are bumped off their flights. Allegedly some are made to pay under the table from P5,000 to P50,000 to be let onboard the plane.

An ex-immigration chief, Rodriguez, during recent hearings on the justice department’s budget for 2012, grilled its officers on the incidents. The agency, with the BI, NBI and prosecutors under it, co-heads with the social welfare office a task force against human trafficking. Reps. Henry Pryde Teves (Negros Oriental) and Emil Ong (Northern Samar) had informed Rodriguez of their touring province-mates being off-loaded. His own constituents have cried of harassment and extortion, he said. Supposedly the justice officers are reviewing the profiling method, in view of the numerous complaints. Rodriguez said he would recall them to Congress after the Undas holidays for updates.

From August 2010 to July 2011 the BI brags to have off-loaded 60,000 “tourist workers,” that is, suspected undocumented workers on tourist visas. But President Noynoy Aquino, in a recent awarding of the task force, noted that with 37 prosecutions of human traffickers in one year, it has more than doubled the past admin’s five-year record. This only means that tens of thousands of other tourist off-loadings did not result in investigations and charges. In short, the BI had not done its “final gate-keeping” mission of apprehending the culprits and aiding the victims. The tourists became victims of flight bump-offs or delays, on mere suspicion of being fakes. And yet the government already collected from them P1,620 in travel tax and P750 in airport terminal fee.

The BI is just one of the many headaches that Filipinos have to deal with to go abroad. Legit overseas workers have to comply with myriad paperwork and fees imposed by labor agencies. By making it extra hard for them, unscrupulous bureaucrats are able to extort grease money.

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A recent off-loading victim is a young air-conditioning businessman (the son of a U.P.-Diliman fraternity brod) from Pampanga. The BI stopped him from leaving the Manila international airport for a special three-day seminar with new partners in Qatar. Reason: his visa was a paper issuance, legit but uncommon, instead of the usual stamp on the passport, which can actually and easily be obtained on arrival at Doha. His mistake, if one could call it that, was to tell the immigration officer the truth about his purpose of travel. And so he was debarred on suspicion of going to undocumented work in the Middle East. Undaunted the businessman rebooked a flight to Hong Kong, no visa required, so no questioning by immigration. From there, he took a connection to Qatar. A day late and incurring tens of thousand of pesos in additional expenses, his partners anxiously welcomed him.

A friend of mine who heads the human resource department of a chain of resorts in the Maldives made a confession. She has stopped recruiting Filipinos as chefs, hotel supervisors and tour marketers. This is in spite of her superiors’ preference for Filipinos. Why? Because, she says, it’s so difficult to get them out of the country and into the worksite. At least thrice before, she had been embarrassed when her recruits were barred from leaving Manila, even though their employment papers were in full order.

How many other businesses and overseas jobs have been lost or delayed because of misplaced policies and restrictions?

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This is to request for your prayers. Our beloved Fr. Guido Arguelles joined our Creator yesterday at 8:30 in the morning. His wake will be at the Ateneo Loyola House, Quezon City. Interment is on Nov. 4. Thank you to those who followed the feature of his reflections last year in this column. The complete compilation will be published in the coming weeks.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

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