Recently, the Bureau of Immigration announced the arrest in Palawan of four Chinese nationals who are suspected to be behind the proliferation of fraudulently-acquired government-issued identification cards and documents.
According to the BI, these foreign nationals use Philippine documents to avoid inspection, buy property, or even interfere in politics.
With their arrest, it is also hoped that the operations of these entities and proliferation of fraudulently-acquired documents will finally stop.
The four arrested Chinese men, identified as Wang Tao, Li Xiaoming, Guo Zhi Yang and Lyu Zhiyang, were arrested in Brgy. San Pedro in Palawan City. The operation was conducted in coordination with the Naval Forces West, National Intelligence Coordinating Agency 4B and the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Lyu, who also reportedly goes by the alias ‘Ken Garcia Lee’, was allegedly the mastermind of the operation, having earned notoriety in the local community after being tagged as the group’s ‘mafia leader’ in Palawan. He was said to head a local syndicate providing illegally-obtained government-issued documents to undesirable aliens and trafficking victims.
Indeed during the operation, BI operatives found and confiscated several Philippines-issued IDs including drivers’ licenses, postal IDs and birth certificates.
According to Manahan, the arresting team of the operation have been working on the case for several months and have kept close coordination with intelligence forces and law enforcement agents to ensure the smooth arrest of the subjects.
The suspects are reportedly considered by authorities as ‘big fish’, having illegally provided Philippine IDs to foreigners pretending to be Filipinos for quite some time now.
It will be recaled that just before the said operation, Congressman Robert “Ace” Barbers made a statement, expressing concern on the growing number of arrests and interceptions of foreign nationals holding Philippine documents.
Also last year, the BI reported at least ten cases of arrested fake Filipinos presenting authentic, Philippine documents.
All four nabbed Chinese natiionals have been transferred to the BI’s facility in Bicutan, Taguig and now face charges for misrepresentation and undesirability in violation of the Philippine Immigration Act of 1940.
While congratulations are truly in order for BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco and BI intelligence division Chief Fortunato ‘Jun’ Manahan, Jr. for the successful arrest of the four suspects, something else must be done.
Note that while the arrested foreign nationals were indeed at fault, it was for the proliferation of ‘fraudulently-qcauired’ public documents issued by various government entities.
This means that the subject documents are truly issued by government agencies and the questionable part is how these aliens managed to get them.
Investigation must be made as to who they have been conniving with on the part of the government institutions that issued the said documents. These foreign nationals will not succeed if not for the help given by those in government.
Since they are still out there, another group may just replace the arrested ones and the irregularity continues.
The root of the anomaly must be addressed too, first and foremost because otherwise, the arrests made would be in vain.
