43,000 OFWs barred from leaving country last year — BI

By Evelyn Macairan (The Philippine Star), Jul 8, 2017

MANILA, Philippines – The Bureau of Immigration (BI) yesterday reported that more than 43,000 people have been barred from leaving the country during the first year of the Duterte administration as part of the policy of offloading suspected undocumented overseas workers.

In a statement, BI Port Operations Division chief Marc Red Mariñas said that from July 2016 until June this year, the bureau recorded a total of 43,233 Filipinos who were offloaded from different ports in the country.

Mariñas said the passengers’ departures were deferred because they failed to comply with all of the requirements that would prove they are legitimate tourists and not “tourist workers,” a term used for undocumented overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) disguised as tourists.

He also disclosed that 502 of the passengers, suspected of being trafficking victims, were turned over to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking for investigation, while the cases of 433 others were referred to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration for appropriate action.

About 90 percent of the offloaded passengers were screened at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport while the rest were processed in other ports such as Mactan, Clark, Kalibo, Zamboanga, Davao and Iloilo.

BI Commissioner Jaime Morente said that their campaign against human trafficking is one of the reasons the Philippines continues to fall under Tier 1 category.

Being in Tier 1 does not mean that there is no trafficking occurring in a given country, rather, it means the country has acknowledged that the crime is prevalent and has made sustained efforts to suppress it.

Furthermore, its interventions meet the minimum requirements set by the United States Trafficking Victims Prevention Act of 2000, as amended.