A few months ago my friend Bob Martin had an interesting blog post entitled "Could you be Deported?"  It raised quite a bit of interesting discussion on his blog and I have a few personal anecdotes of my own on that subject (like an American guy a little over a year ago who came to the Philippines with his Filipina wife and when they landed the police were waiting to meet the flight.  Seems a lady on the plain claimed this man had groped her private parts was she passed him on the way to the restroom … she complained to a cabin attendant and the pilot radioed ahead.  It probably didn’t help this man’s case that the woman was a prominent politician here in the Philippines … the police listened carefully to both sides of the story, then asked the BI officers to permanently blacklist the man and held him in detention at the airport a few hours until the next US-bound flight departed.  He was on it … one way.  He’ll never be allowed back in the Philippines again.

Was he guilty?  Was he so terminally stupid that he did feel this woman up in public?  Or was it a trumped up charge?  Or did the wrong guy get accused of the groping?  Well, we’ll never know, because you don’t need to commit a crime and get convicted in court … lawyers, juries, innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and all that when it is an immigration matter.  The word of the BI officer is the law, and that’s that.

Many Americans will regale each other with these tales often living under the assumption that the "Filipinos have it in for ‘us’".  This Saturday’s (9 February 2008) Philippine Star has an interesting account on page 16 about a Chinese woman who claimed to be escorting her 12 yo son to the Philippines.  Noting that the woman and the boy had different last names the BI officer quite appropriately asked for documentation that the boy was her son

(You know any child under 15 can not enter or leave the Philippines without both parents, or adequate documentation that the accompanying adult has the right to travel with the child … it’s a pretty basic step to help prevent parental kidnappings and child prostitution traffic,, which of course the Philippines gets plenty of blame and badmouthing about…. check on the law before you try traveling with a child).

Anyway, just as with the case a few days ago when I related how my US friend technically shouldn’t have been boarded by the airlines without a visa, this child should have been denied boarding in Hong Kong … these are international child protective laws … but he wasn’t … so the Philippine BI officer quite correctly asked the woman, a Mrs. Chen, for documentation that the boy was her son and that she had the right to take him across international borders.

According to several witnesses, instead of complying, Mrs. Chen became foul-mouthed and abusive and loudly insulted the BI officers as being "silly" for enforcing the laws of the Philippines.  Even after being taken to a private room and offered the chance to make up the documentation "after the fact", Mrs. Chen still insisted on expounding on the stupidity of the laws of the Philippines.

Any idea who got the last word in?  Yep, Immigration Commissioner Marcelino Libanan reviewed the findings, ordered the woman blacklisted and sent her immediately back to Hong Kong.  I think there is something to take away from the commissioner’s statement … "We welcome tourists, but undesirable aliens like this woman, who is so arrogant and rude, do not deserve the privilege to enter our country".

Quit frankly, I’m 100% on the commissioner’s side in this.  Even though she was in violation the woman was offered the chance to simply full up the forms and make the entry legal … but nothing would do for her until she told the Filipinos what she thought of them.  Get a load off her chest, in so many words.  Make sure ‘they’ knew who they were dealing with.  Hope she now feels her words were worth it.  Myself?  When they tell me I screwed up and offer me a way to make it right?  I make it right.  YMMV.

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