A GROUP of immigration officials assigned at the NAIA terminal 3 are being chided by their own colleagues for allegedly causing the country embarrassment when they decided to ‘exclude’ or disallow the entry into the country of a Chinese diplomat who merely came to the Philippines to help the victims of `Yolanda’ in Tacloban.
The passenger, identified as Zheng Wanming, reportedly arrived in the country at around 5 a.m. last January 6 aboard Cebu Pacific flight 5J 679 from Shanghai, China.
Instead of being accorded due courtesy as a foreign government official and a 9E visa holder, ZHeng was excluded or barred from entering by an immigration monitoring officer identified as Lady Joan Ruiz. The said exclusion was further noted by their supervisor Lynn Austria and the reason given was ‘no return ticket.’
BI-NAIA sources said that under existing regulations, holders of 9E visas are not required to have return tickets because of their status.
According to them, the said immigration officers caused the Chinese diplomat much embarrassment first when Ruiz questioned Zheng while he was filling out his immigration entry form.
After seeing that Zheng did not know how to speak in English well and that he is a technician, he was immediately excluded by the immigration, without bothering to look at his visa.
The sources said that even their supervisor, Austria, did not bother to check what kind of visa Zheng was using. It was later found out that Zheng was sent by the Chinese government to help in Tacloban.
The Chinese Embassy had to call up the office of the Commissioner so that the exclusion was recalled late that evening. ‘Walang magawa ang Chinese diplomat kundi umiling na lang at sumama ang loob,’ BI source said.
The BI-NAIA sources said the problem with those running the BI is that they allow non-experts to do the profiling and other sensitive jobs in the airport which only bring about embarrassment to the country.
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