(PNA)

House Minority Leader and 4Ps Party-list Rep. Marcelino Libanan has expressed high hopes for the proposed Bureau of Immigration (BI) Modernization Act, which has recently moved forward in the House of Representatives.

“We are counting on the full automation and digitization of the BI’s processes and services to reinforce border security and improve travel experience,” Libanan, one of the bill’s principal authors, said.

This automation and digitization are embodied in House Bill (HB) No. 8203, which was recently approved by the Committee on Justice and Committee on Appropriations.

Through the bill, the BI seeks to embark on an aggressive plan to modernize its systems and professionalize its staff.

Libanan originally introduced the BI Modernization Bill in 2004, when he was representative of the lone district of Eastern Samar in Congress. He refiled the bill last year upon his election as 4Ps Party-list representative.

HB No. 8203 was among the priority measures earlier adopted by the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC). Incidentally, Libanan served as BI commissioner for three years during the Arroyo administration.

The bill authorizes the BI to retain in a trust fund “no more than P1.2 billion” of its annual income from fees, fines, and penalties.

The fund would then be used to bankroll the BI’s information technology (IT) projects, among other modernization plans, and to build up the capabilities of immigration officers.

The bill also bumps up by two notches the salary grades assigned to junior immigration officers to allow the BI to attract qualified staff. At present, due to low pay, 742 of the BI’s 2,795 authorized permanent positions remain unfilled, translating to a 26 percent vacancy rate.

Attached to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the BI enforces the country’s immigration, citizenship, and alien admission and registration laws. It has a budget of only P1.6 billion in the 2023 General Appropriations Act (GAA).

When he was BI Commissioner, Libanan introduced reforms that became the subject of an Asian Institute of Management (AIM) graduate program case study, titled “Transforming the Bureau of Immigration".

The study recognized Libanan’s innovations at the BI that “resulted to unprecedented revenue collection, enhancement of the country’s climate for investment and employment generation, improved service due to procedures simplification and systems computerization and capability enhancement and moral transformation of BI personnel".