TO this very day, starting from 1940, a lengthy period of 75 years, our immigration policy has remained focused on one single consideration: The discouragement of foreigners, through a maze of restrictive admission measures, from coming into the country to engage in business that will pose a competition to our domestic producers.
This is the policy as enunciated in Commonwealth Act of 1940, better known as “An Act to Control and Regulate the Immigration of Aliens into the Philippines.”
This is the exact opposite of the immigration policy we badly need today, which must aim precisely at the encouragement of foreigners to come into the country to engage in business—invest in the economy’s industrial and agricultural sectors, create employment opportunities for our people, make a lot of money and obey applicable laws of the land.
Thanks to Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., we are about to have the policy change we direly need. Speaker Belmonte, with the support of many of his colleagues in the House of Representatives, is sponsoring a bill that will revamp our immigration policy from A to Z. As articulated in what is to be called the Philippine Immigration Act of 2015, our new immigration policy will take into account the spirit of liberalization and globalization now sweeping planet Earth. We will want to welcome the rapidly increasing number of foreigners traveling to the Philippines for various purposes, including business, employment and pleasure.
At the same time, the proposed new policy will give explicit cognizance to the new kinds of nefarious activities that have arisen in the world: Human smuggling, trafficking in persons, kidnapping, drug trafficking, even terrorism. As the Explanatory Note of the proposed bill puts it, “These criminal activities have become more complex, more threatening to the integrity of our borders, national security, national sovereignty and the rule of law.” These nefarious activities must be confronted with courage and determination.
At the moment, the Bureau of Immigration (BOI) is organizationally inadequate to deal with this changed environment. The tools available to it, legal and administrative, to carry out its mandate are similarly woefully inadequate.
The proposed bill will reorganize the BOI and convert it into a commission, “with expanded jurisdiction and streamlined powers and functions to eliminate red tape and enhance efficiency and efficacy in the bureaucracy, taking into account national sovereignty, territorial integrity, national security and the right to self-determination.
“The Bureau of Immigration will become one of the most important government agencies In view of its vital role not only as gatekeeper, but also as agent of economic development.”
At this point, we pause to give credit where credit is due: To Immigration Commissioner Siegfrid B. Mison, who, despite severe handicaps, has succeeded in the last few years in leading the BOI to commendable levels of achievement.
We lend our strongest support to this initiative of Speaker Belmonte to revamp our
immigration policy, to better redirect it to the requirements of national development and the challenges of the new global environment.
Image credits: jimbo Albano