Sen. Risa Hontiveros on Tuesday raised alarm over what she called a growing pattern of identity fraud involving foreign nationals securing Philippine documents through illegal means.
“Nobody should be able to purchase being a Filipino,” Hontiveros said, following an incident where a Chinese woman was arrested at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) for allegedly posing as a Filipino using falsified identification.
The senator said that recent developments suggest official documents such as passports and birth certificates have long been vulnerable to corruption and misuse.
She urged law enforcement agencies to continue investigating the networks behind the illegal sale of Filipino identities, while calling on institutions like the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to review and clean up their systems if necessary.
“To be honest, I wasn’t surprised that yet another foreigner pretended to be Filipino. Our Senate hearings on POGO and Alice Guo clearly showed that official Filipino documents have been up for sale and used for evil,” Hontiveros said.
The case involved 43-year-old Wang Xiujun, who arrived in Manila from Kuala Lumpur on Sunday and was intercepted by immigration authorities.
The incident ignited comparisons to the case of Alice Guo, the former Bamban mayor who was later disqualified for faking Filipino citizenship.
