THE Bureau of Immigration has already crafted a draft amnesty for some 500,000 overstaying undocumented and illegal aliens and it is just awaiting the signature of President Rodrigo Duterte for implementation.
“We hope to be able to come up with an amnesty program so they would be encouraged to come out, register, regularize their stay and they would not be arrested and deported. They can extend their stay here,” Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said during Samahang Plaridel’s Kapihan sa Manila Hotel.
“At present, they are paying for protection to the immigration police to be able to stay. It costs them more and they have no peace of mind,” Morente said.
“Their passports had been canceled. [But] some corrupt immigration officials are capitalizing on this and extorting money from these foreign nationals in exchange for protection and promise of not getting deported,” Morente said.
“There is no crackdown being done against them,” Morente stressed, warning corrupt immigration officials against spreading rumors that there is a looming crackdown against them.
The bulk of illegal aliens in the country are mainly Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian and Koreans, among others, Morente said.
Morente said the overstaying foreign nationals came to the Philippines to do business or find work and many of them end up selling products at the sidewalks of the Divisoria shopping district in Manila although they could not even speak Filipino. Others, he said, are employed in Chinese restaurants.
In the same forum, Surigao del Sur Rep. Prospero Pichay said the only way to lure these foreigners to make their stay legal was to grant them amnesty that would allay their fears of getting deported.
According to the draft amnesty measure, illegal aliens would be fined P25,000 for every year of illegal stay in the country, an amount which Pichay said they could easily afford.
Pichay said some Malaysians and Indonesians, who do business in Mindanao could already pass off as Filipinos because they can now speak the local dialect fluently.
“They can now speak Visayan and so you would not suspect that they are overstaying foreigners,” Pichay said.
Last June, the BI implemented the amnesty program under Republic Act No. 7919 but only less than 2,000 of the more than 15,000 foreigners living the country availed of the program.
The restamping program expired on June 15, 2016, and only 1,080 foreign nationals tapped the restamping or the alien integration act visa.