The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
The Bureau of Immigration (BI) recently ordered its personnel to strictly enforce its policy declaring as off-limits to unauthorized persons its immigration areas in all the international airports nationwide and prohibiting the giving of VIP treatment to passengers.
In a statement, Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said he has instructed BI port operations division Marc Red Mariñas to relay the said directive to all BI personnel assigned and discipline those who defy the same.
Morente warned that BI employees should desist from escorting or facilitating arriving and departing passengers, either personally or via text messaging or phone calls, for the purpose of expediting the conduct of immigration formalities by immigration officers in the counters.
The BI chief also reiterated that only BI employees who are on duty, and those who have travel orders, are allowed to be present in or at the premises of any international port entry at any given time.
Morente said he issued the directive after reports reached him that a well-known personality, who arrived Monday night from Bangkok at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), was seen being escorted by a retired policeman.
The escort allegedly wore a pass from the airport’s pass control office when he met and accompanied the passenger and escorted him up to the immigration counter of the NAIA 1 terminal.
Morente added that he will ask MIAA general manager Ed Monreal to investigate the incident and take appropriate action to prevent its recurrence in the future.
In compliance with Morente’s directive, Mariñas issued on Tuesday a memorandum warning all BI personnel assigned at the airports to strictly obey the bureau’s “no travel facilitation, no loafing and no loitering” policy.
Mariñas warned that employees who disobey the directive will be dealt with severely and meted stiff disciplinary actions.
He further instructed the members of the BI-NAIA’s travel control and enforcement unit (TCEU) and border control and intelligence unit (BCIU) to directly report to his office any violation of the said policy.
Immigration officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) barred from entering the country over the weekend a Malaysian who attempted to enter the country with a spurious passport by assuming the identity of another compatriot.
Morente said 41-year-old Paul Daniel Lim was intercepted last Saturday upon his arrival at the NAIA 3 terminal aboard a Cebu Pacific flight from Kota Kinabalu.
Lim, according to Morente, was excluded for using a spurious travel document as the passenger himself gave his real name and confessed that he only assumed the identity of the person in the passport that he used in traveling to Manila.
“His apprehension is a product of the extra vigilance that our immigration officers were told to exercise amid reports that some foreign jihadists have managed to slip into our country through our airports,” Morente said.
He added that immigration officers were instructed to be stricter in assessing foreign travelers from countries where the said jihadists usually come from, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Middle East.
BI port operatios division chief Marc Red Marias said Lim aroused the suspicion of the immigration officer who noticed that his facial appearance did not match the picture in the biopage of the passport that he presented.
His passport was the in the name of a certain Arry Bin Jong, a 37-year-old who in the picture looked different and younger than the passenger.
Mariñas said it was during questioning that Lim gave his real name and confessed that the passport he used was fraudulently acquired.
He alleged he was forced to hide his real identity because he is wanted in Malaysia for estafa after he reneged on paying the car loan of a friend that he had guaranteed.
Mariñas also reported that Lim disclosed the name of his Filipino contact in whose house in Quezon City he allegedly intended to stay.
He showed the text of a conversation with the said contact wherein the latter advised him to present a return ticket and tell the immigration officer that he was the one who invited the Malaysian to visit Manila.