Immigration bureau now a revenue arm

From a purely law enforcement arm of government ensuring the safety of the country from foreign fugitives, the Bureau of Immigration is now a revenue agency which was given a collection target by the Department of Budget and Management of P850 million this year.

But Immigration Commissioner Andrea Domingo, a second timer in the bureau, vowed to President Arroyo to raise P1 billion, which she is confident of collecting from the visa and alien legalization fees of certain foreign nationals in the country.

Domingo told The STAR that from the alien legalization program alone, she is confident of raising P100 million although this would involve only those foreigners who are not yet considered undesirable by the BI and are thus subject for immediate deportation.

She said the bureau is rushing the full computerization of records (which is the bulk of its work) to upgrade its procedures and processes on visas, permits, investors visas and other legalization documents.

Domingo said that within the year, all the systems and procedures of the bureau will be contained in a traveller’s manual that will be distributed at ports and airports so that tourists and businessmen wishing to visit or do business in the country will know how to go about their papers without having to resort to fixer and insiders.

At the same time, she appealed to the public to report the operation of fixers in the bureau so that those destroying the image of BI can be dealt with at once.

She also disclosed that they are streamlining their operations personnel in the vital international ports and airports to ensure that there is enough manpower to attend to the needs of incoming and outgoing visitors.

She said since the passage in 1998 of the alien legalization law, some 1,000 aliens, most of them coming from the People’s Republic of China have been staying illegally in the Philippines and from whom the BI can not collect fees because they are already undesirables.

Many of them, in fact, have refused to pay the appropriate fees for their legalization and have declared their illegal status in the hope that the BI would legalize them, she said.