The Bureau of Immigration (BI) assured that its officers at the international airports are ready to process thousands of returning overseas Filipinos who are being repatriated from abroad amid the continuing Covid-19 pandemic.
In a statement, Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said the BI will always see to it that the number of immigration officers deployed at the airports is always adequate so that passengers of these repatriation flights are served properly and processed upon their arrival in the country.
“We assure our returning Kababayans, the airlines, airport authorities, and organizers of these repatriation efforts that we have the sufficient manpower to address their needs insofar as conducting immigration formalities for these passengers are concerned,” Morente said.
The BI Chief issued the statement after Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. described the ongoing repatriation of overseas Filipinos as the biggest ever in Philippine history.
Locsin even surmised that what is happening could possibly be the “biggest repatriation anywhere, of any country, in the world.”
Statistics cited from Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana indicate that since last year when the pandemic broke out, more than a million of overseas Filipinos, mostly contract workers, were already repatriated from various countries.
BI assures uninterrupted service to returning overseas Filipinos
It has been observed that the last mass repatriation of this magnitude occurred in 1991 during the Gulf War when more than 20,000 to 30,000 were sent home from the Middle East.
Atty. Carlos Capulong, BI Port Operations Division Chief, said that there has been an upsurge in the number of arriving repatriated Filipinos since the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) recently authorized the different airlines to mount special commercial flights that would usher in Filipinos who remain stranded abroad due to the pandemic.
Capulong said the BI continues to operate at full capacity at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) despite the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Metro Manila.
“Despite the health risks they face, our immigration officers at international ports are making a worthy sacrifice in reporting for duty to ensure that our services to the traveling public are not hampered and interrupted,” the BI official added.
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