A total of 401 foreigners had been denied entry to the Philippines as of last March 31, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) said on Thursday, April 18.
Citing the reports of its Immigration Protection and Border Enforcement Section (I-PROBES), the BI said among those denied entry were 254 Vietnamese, 76 Chinese, 19 Indonesians, 17 Burmese, eight Moroccans, and four Ghanians.
BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco explained that the bureau acted on intelligence information that many of those aliens are working for illegal online gaming hubs in the Philippines.
“These illegal hubs are usually operated by syndicates that recruit foreign nationals, enticing them to work without proper documentation. We’ve seen that in many of our arrests both on the ground and at the airports,” Tansingco said.
In excluding the aliens, Tansingco explained that immigration officers “look at patterns of previous arrests, as well as travel histories of other intercepted aliens.”
“We use this pattern to intercept other potential violators, as well as those holding spurious documents,” he pointed out.
After being sent back to their respective ports of origin, he said the 401 foreigners have been placed in the bureau's blacklist and barred from future attempts to enter the Philippines.