Sen. Pia Cayetano said on Wednesday, March 13, that syndicates are gaining access to Filipino citizenship which in the first place, should not be "sold."

"I think ang mahalagang mensahe natin eh hindi dapat nabibili ang pagka-Pilipino. Pero sa nakikita natin, nabibili siya. Nabibili siya sa pamamagitan ng sindikato (The important message here is that being Filipino should not be bought. But from what we're seeing, it's happening. It's being bought through syndicates)," Cayetano said during the investigation of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee  on the unauthorized proliferation and use of government documents by foreign nationals.

Cayetano presented a case wherein a Vietnamese national used a duly-issued Philippine passport which bore a name that was different to her Vietnamese passport. Yet the document was found to be genuine and duly-issued by the DFA.

She also provided another example which is an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) who was supposed to travel for the first time but records from the Bureau of Immigration (BI) showed that she already had previous travels.

"In fact lumabas na (it showed) that person had already departed twice as a land-based OFW in 2015 and 2019, and had not returned to the Philippines since then. But here was this person in front of the officer, and yet twice na siya daw nakaalis at hindi pa nakabalik (she already flew out twice and has not returned). So tatlo na ang identity niya (So she now has three identities)," she said.

During the discussions of the hearing, senators found out that this is being done by the late registration of birth through the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) either by using the names of deceased persons or posing as Filipinos.

After obtaining a "legitimate" document from PSA, the foreign nationals would use it to apply for a Philippine passport.

"Tapos hindi naman sa biased, pero tinanong ng ating mga kasamahan, ano ba yung mga nationality nun, karamihan lumabas na Chinese (Not to be biased, but our colleagues asked their nationality and majority of them are Chinese)," Cayetano said.

According to PSA, the top four areas where there's a large number of late registrants are in Pasig City, Davao Del Sur, Manila, and Quezon City.

DFA said during the hearing that they have intercepted 17 individuals who are mostly foreign nationals who are in possession of different fake Philippine-issued documents which has already been endorsed to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).