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By William B. Depasupil, Reporter
THE newly-formed antihuman smuggling panel of
the Department of Justice failed to get a convincing answer from the
Bureau of Immigration on the huge disparity between the number of
entry visas issued and actual arrival of visa holders.
During Wednesday’s first fact-finding probe of
the panel, the Immigration Regulation Division’s chief, lawyer
Gary Mendoza, explained the discrepancy may have been caused by the
incomplete records supplied to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)
by the Philippine Embassy in India.
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez ordered the
probe in response to a letter from Immigration Commissioner
Marcelino Libanan, after bureau records showed a discrepancy of
4,843 between the number of entry visas issued by the Foreign
Affairs department and the actual arrival of visa holders from June
2005 to June 2007.
Some 15,000 entry visas were issued by the
Foreign Affairs department’s post in India during the said period.
The discrepancy amounts to an estimated P43 million in foregone
revenues for the government.
Unaccounted Indians
“The apparent discrepancy is explainable,”
Mendoza said. “The DFA figure issued by the post in India is
possibly not complete.”
He explained that until the records of the
bureau and the Foreign Affairs department are reconciled, it could
not be said that there are about 5,000 Indians who remain
unaccounted in the country.
Libanan proposed the creation of a working
committee, composed of representatives from the Justice and Foreign
Affairs departments, and the Immigration bureau, to establish the
facts on the actual visas issued in India as against the number of
arrivals in the Philippines, among others.
Undersecretary Ernesto Pineda, the panel head,
and its other members are amenable to Mendoza’s proposal.
Asked by Pineda on how the bureau could stop
human smuggling, Mendoza, short of admitting that it could be
stopped, said that “there are many well-meaning people” serving
at the Immigration bureau, adding that through his long years of
service in the government, he has never been accused of malfeasance.
Under the law, the Immigration bureau has the
power to issue visas to foreigners. However, it is the Foreign
Affairs department that implements the issuance of entry visas,
because the bureau has no immigration attaches assigned abroad.
The Pineda panel will also look into the
activities of human smuggling syndicates and the participation of
some travel agencies in the nefarious activities of the said crime
groups.
There are reports that some immigration officers
at the airports and other ports of entry are in cahoots with human
smuggling syndicates that recruit young Filipino women who end up
working as prostitutes abroad.
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