No brain(s)-er

It is a no-brainer that our immigration service – especially at our international airports – should be improved and modernized, even overhauled. As we try to attract investors, tourists and retirees to come visit and set up shop and winter homes here, the welcome we give them at our airports is dismal and most unwelcoming. At both NAIA terminals 1 and 2, if you happen to arrive at peak hours when two or more flights are also coming in, what greets you after deplaning – tired, perhaps sore from a long flight –is enough to make you want to turn around and get back on the plane and fly out of here.

More often than not it is sheer chaos at the immigration area. Sometimes only a few counters are manned. There is no distinction between Filipino and foreign passport holders, OFWs, residents, visitors... Some counters display a makeshift sign “Philippine passports only” but foreigners line up there anyway, simply because all the other lines are so long.

It is done at the departure areas in both terminals so I don’t see why it cannot be done in the arrival areas – a system of having a single queue, with the person at the head of the line going to the next available counter. Why oh why must the arrival area have a line in front of each counter, and you have people constantly jumping lines when one lines moves faster than the others, and sometimes a line becomes two lines, or two lines become one, because – just like on the roads – some people take a position between two lines to see which one moves faster. It is utterly chaotic, and totally stupid. Can the MIAA (Manila International Airport Authority) and the Bureau of Immigration (BI) – both headed by retired generals, by the way – put their noggins together and pleeezzzee sort this mess out.

My next beef is entirely with the BI – can they please have a sufficient supply of arrival forms, and will the airlines please get ample stock to give to passengers. Returning from a trip last week, I got an arrival form and a Customs form at the PAL check-in counter at Taoyuan airport in Taipei. In flight, the attendant handed out Customs forms, and a different form (with a blue stripe on top) that she said was only for non-Philippine passport holders. I asked for clarification with regards to Philippine passport holders; she came back to me and said I didn’t need a form but had to go through immigration anyway. I filled out my form anyway, and kept it in my passport.

Good thing I did, because my friend believed the attendant, but when she got to the immigration counter, the guy asked for her arrival form. Fortunately for her, there were forms available at the table by the wall, which is not always the case – one time last year there were absolutely no forms available in flight or at the terminal (my tour leader had the foresight to give all of us forms ahead of the trip). And there was this big gaggle of tourists from Guangzhou shouting their heads off at their tour leader because they were stuck with no forms and could not clear immigration! Fun, no?

And while I’m at it, let me point out that almost all BI officers at the airport – male or female – are so unsmiling to the point of being surly. Okay, it’s not really fun to be checking passports for eight hours and okay, they can’t be expected to be smiling GROs, but can they just be a little less ornery?

The Joint Foreign Chambers last week issued anew a statement urging Congress to pass the Philippine Immigration Act of 2014 to modernize immigration services. “We believe these efforts will help make Philippine tourism, long-stay and retirement industries more competitive with the rest of our ASEAN neighbors and help the country grow twice as fast,” read their statement.

Among the measures in the bill is for the BI to increase its workforce so that immigration services can operate on a 24/7 basis. Like hospitals, the police and newspaper offices, the nature of work at the airport is 24/7 – as long as there are flights scheduled to arrive or depart, all services at the airports should be operational. Hire more people, schedule shifts, pay night differentials and overtime – which, by the way, should be part of airlines’ landing fees and should not be billed to them separately – for crying out loud, just do it.

While overhauling immigration services needs a new law, fixing these little irritants does not – print enough forms (I recall a company used to do this free for the privilege of having their logo on a cover sheet), put in stanchions with retractable tape in between to organize a queue, give immigration officers a ten-minute break after every hour or two hours at the counter so they won’t be so masungit....

No brainer, right? Or maybe it’s just a matter of no brains...