Guarding our borders

Grisly was the news report about a Chinese tourist-couple who brought their “lovers’ quarrel” to a new high—or very low, low.

A TV report said the woman was jogging along Roxas Boulevard in Manila when a car driven by her boyfriend drove up behind her. The man got out of the car and started arguing with the woman. CCTV footage captured the two of them shouting at each other, and the man angrily striding away and getting into his car. The woman even allegedly gestured, provoking the man to run her over. Instead, the car backed away, only to speed up and hit the woman who had already turned her back. Seeing that she had been hit, the man went out of his car and stabbed the woman twice, after which he went back to his car, run over her again, and then drove away.

As they say, this could happen to anyone, anywhere.

Not so accidental is the report last year of the Bureau of Immigration of an “alarming increase in the number of Taiwanese fugitives” who are able to enter the country, despite the screening required for a visa to the Philippines. More recently, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) raided the compound owned by a prominent clan in cushy Ayala Alabang Village and found an illegal drug laboratory in the premises, along with four Mainland Chinese suspected of operating the shabu lab. Subsequent raids in the same village revealed other drug labs under the guise of peaceful residences and their Chinese operators. Other operations against drug manufacturers and those behind illegal activities here (including smuggling) have yielded other Chinese criminals from the Mainland, Hong Kong or Taiwan. How were they able to enter the Philippines? Don’t Chinese have to go through (presumably) rigorous screening processes before they could get an entry visa to this country?

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Reports of illegal Chinese migrants and criminal syndicates freely operating in the country are nothing new.

And there can be no better proof of our porous borders than the fact that up to 80 percent of deported aliens are Chinese nationals. And despite several laws, regulations, policies and amnesty programs liberalizing the process of residency and citizenship for Chinese nationals here, we are still seeing an influx of illegal Chinese entering the country. Of course, much of the blame must be placed at the door of the responsible agencies—airport security forces, immigration officials and consular officers—who either look the other way or actively cooperate in the illegal entry of foreigners.

But while the government works to set these agencies back on the “daang matuwid,” it seems only logical to continue our vigilance against the entry of unwanted foreigners. I refer not just to travelers from China but from other countries as well, especially those engaged in drug trafficking and/or human smuggling.

And the simplest, most cost-effective way to screen the entry of undesirable aliens is to stop them before they reach our shores, through the process of screening and document verification in our own embassies and consulates, a requirement for the granting of an entry visa.

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Strange then is the proposal aired late last year by Manila Rep. Amado Bagatsing calling for the visa-free entry of travelers from China and India, our two dominant neighbors in Asia.

Visa-free entry for Chinese and Indians, Bagatsing said, could greatly boost tourist arrivals, dangling the possibility that “if even just one percent of India’s and China’s population” take advantage of the visa-free entry, the Philippines would benefit from the arrival of four million Indians and 13 million Chinese.

Well, yes, the Philippines does need to increase the number of tourists entering the country if the Department of Tourism is to reach the target of six million tourist arrivals by 2016. But throwing open our doors to all comers without putting in place the necessary safeguards is not the way to do it.

At present, a form of “visa-free entry” is already available to Chinese from the Mainland, provided they have valid visas from the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan and Schengen (Europe), and they stay in the country for no longer than seven days. Filipinos enjoy the same privilege in Taiwan, under the same conditions. But not so in the Mainland.

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Why are we so eager to provide visa-free entry to Chinese nationals when the Chinese government has yet to reciprocate, or indicate their willingness to reciprocate, with a similar concession?

The proposal, which would lump together all residents of the Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan would also have severe implications on our foreign policy. Taiwan considers itself an independent republic (despite the recent reelection of the incumbent president who is said to favor better relations with the Mainland) and to lump it with China and the special administrative regions would mean acceding to the Chinese assertion of its sovereignty over the island “province.”

Also, in Taiwan, tourists who want to visit the country pay a minimal amount of P1,600 ($40) for their visas, and for this amount, the Philippine government is assured of what an observer has described as “a regulated, albeit imperfect, system in place to filter the entry of visitors in our country between qualified and not qualified guests.”

Chinese have been visiting and migrating to the Philippines almost from the beginning of our history. And for the most part, their entrepreneurial drive, creativity and business acumen have served us well, joining their fates with those of the nation they adopted. I’m sure Chinese-Filipinos join as well in our desire to keep Philippine-Chinese relations positive and productive, by keeping their own unwanted elements away from our shores.