In the eye of an imperfect storm

It’s not easy being an immigration commissioner in a time of terror. Commissioner Andrea Domingo of the Bureau of Immigration knows this only too well, having been at the helm of the agency since EDSA Dos and the onrush of world developments since then, from 9-11 to the current brink of another war.

"We’re on our toes 24 hours a day," Domingo says in an interview during another typical busy morning at BI offices in Intramuros, where the corridors are humming with activity as usual, and varied nationalities approach the doorman of her office trying to seek an audience.

Lately the immigration bureau has been in the news, from the recent arrest of suspected Iraqi agents of Saddam Hussein, to the assassination of former New People’s Army chieftain Romulo Kintanar, who was a security consultant of the BI.

"I can’t tell you just how successful we are," Domingo says, before relating how, last year, two Middle Eastern students who had been to the Philippines around the area of central Mindanao and upon their return back to their home country, authorities who had searched their homes found documents that read like the last will and testament of suicide bombers.

"So that is one happy ending," she says, without delving into specifics of how the BI helped thwart a possible suicide bombing in the country, assuring that they have a watch list of suspected undesirables whom they are constantly monitoring and–this is highly classified–set to pounce on in forthcoming raids.

But, she makes it clear, they are vigilant not to the point of hysteria–no pogroms in depressed quarters or armored vehicles patrolling the airports.

She is aware too of Foreign Secretary Blas Ople’s statement that the Philippines would not grant asylum to enemies of Saddam, and mentions that the Iraqi presence here is limited to just about a hundred, mostly students.

As for that other so-called axis of evil, the North Koreans, their passage through the country is mostly that of asylum-seekers in transit to South Korea or another cold and better place.

It is, on the other hand, the South Koreans that have given the BI headaches of late, in the persons of overstaying tour guides who have set up their own travel agencies here and branched out to related concerns of the tourist industry.

"We are thankful that the Koreans did not issue an advisory against travel to our country," Domingo says, but quickly adds that the many Koreans here should not take away livelihood opportunities of Filipinos, in some instances of which the Pinoy is being exploited in his own land.

Aside from the Koreans, both the Chinese and Indians present a formidable influx of aliens, both legal and illegal.

According to Domingo, there are an estimated 100,000 illegal Chinese in the country, the bulk of them coming in through the porous borders in the north, which she said has necessitated an imminent trip to Batanes to inspect a reported favorite landing strip there of illegal visitors from China.

The Indians, meanwhile, usually enter through the conventional Manila airports, NAIA 1 and 2, with conventional tourist visas, until they rather unconventionally disappear in the course of a few weeks, perhaps somewhere in the vicinity of Mahatma Gandhi Street in Paco.

As of mid-February, there are some 250 aliens either undesirable or with expired visas or spurious documents, in the custody of the BI, filling their dorm-like detention center that has a capacity of 50 to overflowing.

Domingo relates she has requested concerned police authorities for some space at the Bicutan prison to accommodate some aliens, including one undocumented Chinese implicated in the kidnapping of a La Union-based Chinese-Filipina businesswoman.

Shipping them back to the mainland can hardly be an option, since they have no papers to speak of. Besides, it is likely that they have pending cases back in China that would merit them even harsher penalties.

"Sometimes they like it better here," Domingo says, recalling a time when one deported prisoner wrote to her asking to be taken back to the BI detention dorm, which used to have a pool table before it was removed due to space constraints.

On the possibility of returning the favor of mass repatriation on the countless Malaysian as well as Indonesian illegals in the southern Philippines after the mass deportation of Filipinos in Sabah, she says the Philippines will adopt a more humanitarian approach to the problem and on a case-to-case basis.

Then there’s the case of another celebrated detainee, the estranged Brazilian wife of Chinese-Filipino businessman Henry Ocier, whose ongoing custody battle for her children has made Domingo grant her a stay of deportation for humanitarian reasons.

The Brazilian had also been allowed hospital leave after she suffered from appendicitis, which may or may not have been due to the bureau’s P60 per day meal budget per detainee–another aspect the commissioner is trying to upgrade.

"Normally, they (detainees) don’t complain," Domingo says, adding that the estranged but high-profile Mrs. Ocier had asked for and was granted all sorts of concessions, including a room to herself.

Domingo, who has had extensive work experience in immigration matters before landing the top post, says computerization of the bureau is ongoing, with ample assistance from the US which has helped in providing fraud-detection machines and related paraphernalia.

Detection of fraud, she says, is key to the fight against terror, since terrorists operate using multiple fraudulent documents, the better to cover their tracks.

"A number of them use Jordanian passports," she says, though they may not necessarily be from Jordan.

A pet project of the commissioner is finally having a new Immigration Act passed by Congress after 10 years in the making. She had begun the draft during her stint as congress-woman for Pampanga in 1992-1995, so that the pre-war immigration law could be replaced.

"The BI still operates under a Commonwealth Law signed by US President Franklin Roosevelt," she reveals. Among the highlights of the draft bill are provisions dealing with human smuggling and trafficking, plunder of the environment, and terrorism.

Asked to differentiate between human smuggling and human trafficking, Domingo says smuggling entails the foreknowledge and even abetting of the act by the person being smuggled to another place for a pre-arranged fee, while trafficking concerns mostly women and children who are duped into taking jobs with subhuman conditions, such as those in cathouses and sweatshops.

Provisions on terrorism are generically post-9-11, and could be useful as the BI maintains a watch list of 400 individuals on the international blacklist.

The bill made it past the committee hearings during Domingo’s tenure as congresswoman, but for some reason was pigeonholed in the Senate.

It’s the best job in the world," Domingo says of her years as a congresswoman, although she points out that she has no plans to run for an elective post next year, she’s quite happy in her post at Intramuros, notwithstanding a fault line–a consequence of the big 1990 earthquake–directly above her desk in the commissioner’s second floor office.

"That’s my daily death threat," she says, adding that the BI building was structured for only two floors. The groaning records section on the third floor–many of the documents yellowing and prone to crumble at the slightest touch–is set to be partially transferred to two container vans that the bureau has ordered.

During the interview, there comes a call on her cellphone about a suspected terrorist arrested in Clark, a Somalian who has been transferred to Bicutan for further questioning.

Her work is cut out for her and never seems to stop, from reports of al-Qaeda operatives doing pilot training in the country, to the ever resourceful Fil-foreign basketball players.

But there are a pair of Chinese guard dogs watching over her door at the BI, and she gets to visit her hometown of San Fernando twice a month, where her former constituents line up for most of the day and half the night for an audience with the low-profile commissioner, who however has no "fungus-faced" sound bites to entertain assorted hoi polloi.