Fake documents helping hide overstaying foreigners?

Two overstaying foreigners were recently found to be using fake passports to hide their identities. Last February 7, a Vietnamese woman named Huynh Thanh Tuyen, 24, presented a fake Philippine passport with the name Maria Dantic Menor while trying to board a flight for Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Last January 23, Chinese national Zhang Hailin, 36, tried to use a bogus Philippine passport with the name Alex Garcia Tiu to fly to Hanoi, Vietnam.

Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco said they are encountering more and more incidents of counterfeit passports being presented at immigration.

But Zhang had something else; he also had a birth certificate that seemed legitimate.

Now we have to ask: How many more are using fake passports or other documents to hide their identities or to extend their stay in the Philippines?

Not only do these fake documents allow illegal foreigners to extend their stay, they become a tool of crime should that foreigner be involved in something illegal. And we don’t think they want to stay undetected here for altruistic intentions; if they mean to stay under the radar it must be for nefarious ones.

Have such documents been used to hide and aid foreign criminals operating crime gangs posing as Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations and other such entities?

Foreigners who carry around fake Philippine passports may also give our people and country a bad name if they get involved in anything illegal and authorities think that they are Filipinos.

Needless to say, those who forge these documents should be found, arrested, and charged.

It takes quite a big operation to churn out a fake version of something as important as a passport or a birth certificate. While Tuyen said she sourced her fake passport from a friend, we are sure that that friend was not working alone.

Let’s just hope that these operations don’t involve some government agencies, policemen, or powerful local officials.