Stop offloading mere namesakes
While they’re at it, they might as well make thorough the cleanup of that most corrupt Bureau of Immigration. End the extortions not only from foreigners, like in today’s talk of the town, but also from Filipinos at international airports.
The latter has been going on for decades. It involves holding a departing citizen who happens to have namesake wanted by the law. It’s a racket because crooked Immigration men ask for grease money. Their self-respecting colleagues wish to take no part, yet are bound by wrong rules on which the baddies thrive.
Few haven’t heard of the modus operandi. The departing citizen – an overseas worker, businessman, or tourist – presents his passport at the Immigration counter. The Immigration officer runs it through the computer. The same name pops up on screen as being wanted by any of the thousands of courts in the land. The passenger is ushered into the supervisor’s office for questioning.
More often than not, the Immigration men would have nothing on the perplexed passenger. All they can show is the same first and surname of a wanted person, and no other detail matching with the passport entries for a positive identification. No middle name or even initial of the wanted person, no photo, birth date, address, nationality, or gender.
Trained to size up character, usually the Immigration men assess the passenger to be clean. But under silly orders from central office, they must prevent departure and file a report.
The passenger starts to worry about missing not only his flight but, more importantly, his first day of overseas work, his business meeting, or his hotel booking. He asks what can and should be done. If crooked, the supervisor whispers an amount. If not, he advises the passenger to rush to the central or regional office which has authority to delist the namesake. Any which way, precious seconds tick away till airplane boarding.
Imagine the passenger at the Manila International Airport having to rush through traffic to the Immigration central office for the all-important clearance. There he must shell out some cash for the clerk to entertain his request during lunch break or off hours. The photocopying charge alone is astronomic.
The obvious solution here is for the Immigration bureau to put its foot down and refuse court hold-departure orders that have insufficient details. No way should they let lazy or incompetent court clerks make them harass citizens who pay their salaries. Most Immigration men are decent and wish citizens no harm. But they are bound by wrong orders from the top.
This racket has thrived under five post-Marcos martial law administrations. If change truly has come under this sixth one, then the arbitrary holddepartures must stop.
Meanwhile, the man in the street and in the boardroom say the same thing about the P50-million extortion at the bureau: those two associate commissioners must think all Filipinos stupid to buy their alibi. They were caught on camera and audiotape extorting the money in exchange for the release of 1,316 illegal Chinese workers. Returning only P30 million, they claimed that they were gathering evidence of sleaze right at the top. Yet 16 days already had passed since they took the money, and they still haven’t filed any report of their supposed anti-graft investigation. They further claimed that the balance of P20 million was extorted from them by the chief of Immigration intelligence. If so, why did they not arrest the extorter? Or again, immediately file a report. They even implicated in the supposed extortion the very columnist who exposed them. If that columnist really was involved, then why did he break the story in the first place?
They deserve the scorn, not only of their college fraternity elders, President Rodrigo Duterte & Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, but of all thinking Filipinos as well. Their names will go down in history: Al Argosino and Michael Robles.
Too many departing Filipinos have missed flights because Immigration men follow incomplete hold-departure orders.