Trafficked traveling
As it happens, many sympathized with a departing Filipino traveler’s recent undignified tussle with an immigration officer at the country’s main airport that went viral.
Siargao native Cham Tanteras’s interview by the immigration agent was certainly inexcusable, considering she faced a barrage of invasive, ludicrous questions, including if she could produce her graduation yearbook.
Yet, at the same time, the incident showed a larger darker world beyond Ms. Tanteras’ traumatic personal experience.
The larger world in this case is the persistent scourge that has proven resistant to total eradication despite the government’s redoubled efforts — human trafficking.
Though the Bureau of Immigration apologized to Ms. Tanteras and reminded its personnel to conduct interviews professionally, the agency didn’t adequately explain why Ms. Tanteras had raised red flags in the first place regarding her trip to Israel. The BI should have clarified the matter.
It was likely that the browbeating came from an evidently renewed campaign against human trafficking, which in recent months had risen alarmingly.
It turns out, according to the BI, there has been a rise in the number of young Filipino professionals — even “those with good travel records, gainfully employed and graduates of good schools” — ending up as human trafficking victims.
To prove its point, the BI cited a case early this month of a young woman who went to Thailand as a tourist but who was recruited to work in a call center there. She was then trafficked to Myanmar where she was forced to work at an online betting outfit. Luckily, she has been repatriated.
The poor victim, who was enticed through an unnamed social media network, wasn’t one of the 32,000 Filipinos characterized as “deferred departures” so far this year.
Of those denied travel, 472 were found to be victims of human trafficking or illegal recruitment, including at least 10 minors. Another 873 individuals misrepresented themselves or submitted fraudulent documents.
Last year, the BI reported that while 3.97 million Filipinos left the country, there were 50,509 “deferred departures.”
The top reason the BI cited in 26,311 of those “deferred departures” was the travelers’ failure to submit the required travel documents.
Usually, government processes approximately 2.3 million new or renewed contracts for Filipinos to work overseas in nearly 170 countries each year.
Yet, despite legal processes in place, many prospective overseas Filipino workers turn to illegal means, which shadowy Filipino and foreign criminal syndicates have fully exploited.
As a consequence, says a recent United Nations report, “a significant number of Filipino migrant workers become victims of sex trafficking or labor trafficking in numerous industries like industrial fishing, shipping, construction, manufacturing, education, home health care, and agriculture, as well as in domestic work, janitorial service, and other hospitality-related jobs, particularly in the Middle East and Asia and also in all other regions.”
The UN report also says the “manufacture and availability of high-quality fake travel documents have contributed immensely to the growth of the business of trafficking and smuggling.”
According to government experts, Filipino travelers can readily secure fake visas to the USA, Italy and Europe (Schengen visas), as well as other spurious travel documents produced by these trafficking and smuggling syndicates.
Worse, government officials — including those in diplomatic missions, law enforcement and immigration agencies, and other government entities — are allegedly heavily complicit in the trafficking or allow traffickers to operate with impunity.
It is common knowledge corrupt officials accept hefty bribes to facilitate illegal departures for overseas workers, operate sex trafficking establishments, facilitate the production of fraudulent identity documents, or overlook illegal labor recruiters, says the UN.
“The
top reason the BI cited in 26,311 of those ‘deferred departures’ was the travelers’ failure to submit the required travel documents.
Travel, of course, is a constitutional right. No one should be denied it. But then travel, be it for leisure or work, should be done with honest intentions and genuine documents to combat the inhumane human trafficking scourge.
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Despite legal processes in place, many prospective overseas Filipino workers turn to illegal means, which shadowy Filipino and foreign criminal syndicates have fully exploited.