BI on suspected trafficking victims

This refers to the letter from one John Alvin Cabrera, assailing the “unreasonable demands” made by immigration officers on departing Filipino tourists.

Cabrera was wrong in saying that we have yet to come up with clear and explicit rules in preventing the departure of passengers suspected of being human trafficking victims. Since January last year, we have started implementing our guidelines on departure formalities for international-bound passengers. Formulated by a technical working group formed by the Department of Justice and promulgated at the initiative of the Inter-Agency Council against Trafficking, these guidelines spell out the procedures that immigration officers should observe while on duty. These guidelines can be accessed on our website at www.immigration.gov.ph.

Also, in order to prevent the indiscriminate and arbitrary off-loading of suspected human trafficking victims, our immigration officers will request these passengers to fill up a Border Control Questionnaire Sheet. Their answers to the questions on this sheet and to verbal queries are then used as basis by our personnel in assessing whether or not there is a human trafficking situation.

When immigration officers demand the presentation of certain documents, they want to make sure that the passenger is a legitimate tourist and not a human trafficking victim. There have been many cases of human trafficking victims caught attempting to leave as tourists. Thus, we are extra-vigilant in seeing to it that these victims do not get to leave so that they do not go through sad ordeals in foreign lands.

In Office of the Administrative Services (OAS)-Office of the Court Administrator v. Heusdens, the Supreme Court held that a citizen’s right to travel, although constitutionally guaranteed, is not absolute. The high court noted that the Constitution itself provides statutory and inherent limitations regulating the right to travel, particularly in cases where the interest of national security, public safety or public health is at stake.—RICARDO A. DAVID JR., commissioner, Bureau of Immigration