Due to the bad behaviour of Filipinos working in the USA on certain visas the USA has decided to temporarily place a ban on those visas for Filipinos.
In an announcement posted January 18, the department announced that the Philippines will no longer be eligible to participate in the H-2A and H-2B programs due to high overstay rates.
The H-2B visa is issued to foreign workers in the US for temporary non-agricultural services while the H-2A visa allows foreign workers for temporary or seasonal agricultural work.
The ban on the Philippines stems from the nearly 40 percent overstay rate of H-2B visa holders.
"DHS and [Department of State] are concerned about the high volume of trafficking victims from the Philippines who were originally issued H-2B visas and the potential that continued H-2B visa issuance may encourage or serve as an avenue for future human trafficking from the Philippines," the DHS said.
The US government considered the rates of overstay and human trafficking severe enough to remove the H-2A visa program for Filipinos as well.
The DHS noted that there was also an increase in H-2A visa applications from Filipinos between 2015 to 2018.
"The Philippines' continued inclusion creates the potential for abuse, fraud, and other harm to the integrity of the H-2A or H-2B visa programs," the DHS said.
Aside from the Philippines, the Dominican Republic and Ethiopia were also deemed ineligible for the program due to overstay rate and being "at risk of non-compliance," respectively.
Overstaying visas, human trafficking, abuse, and fraud are all behaviours bad and common enough to place the Philippines in the same category as the Dominican Republic and Ethiopia! You know you must be doing something wrong when your country is ranked in the same category as Ethiopia!
Naturally enough the DFA stepped in to make a grand announcement to Filipinos in the USA: BEHAVE!
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) reminds Filipinos abroad, particularly those in the United States, to follow immigration rules and avoid staying beyond what is allowed in their visas.
https://dfa.gov.ph/dfa-news/statements-and-advisoriesupdate/19169-statement-on-the-issue-of-the-h-2a-and-h-2b-visas
The problem of Filipinos overstaying their visas is nothing new. There is even a quaint little term for it: TNT.
I remember the term being used as early as the 1970s: TNT, which meant tago ng tago (hiding and hiding) and referred to Filipinos who went overseas usually as tourists, and then stayed on without the proper papers.
At that time, TNT mainly referred to Filipinos in the United States. People would get a tourist visa, or a student visa, and then stayed on after the visa had expired, getting a Social Security number and finding a job . . . or an American citizen to marry, which would then make them eligible to stay on.
https://opinion.inquirer.net/21827/tnt-dreams
How does an illegally overstaying non-citizen obtain a Social Security number without committing fraud? That number is absolutely crucial for doing just about anything in the USA especially landing a job. Estimates of illegal alien Filipinos in the USA run into the hundreds of thousands.
About 271,000 undocumented Filipinos in the United States (US), who face deportation in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s planned crackdown on illegal immigrants, have been assured of livelihood and employment assistance once they return home to the Philippines.
https://news.mb.com.ph/2016/11/16/271000-pinoy-tnts-in-us/
Since the US DHS has cited two reasons, overstaying visas and human trafficking, as the reason to suspend the H2-B and H2-A visa programs let us take a look at two stories. One of a Pinoy who was trafficked to the USA and another who overstayed his visa. I think we will see a common denominator in both cases and I'm sure you can already guess what it is.
First the Pinoy who was trafficked. His name is Avelino Reloj and you can read about him
here.
When Avelino Reloj left the Philippines for a job as a hotel janitor in Missouri, United States, he felt a world of possibilities was opening up. He quit his job as a house keeper in Cebu City, borrowed 400,000 pesos (US$7,700) for the trip, and bade farewell to the clear blue water and white sand that his home country is so famous for. For Reloj, life in the Philippines had been a far cry from such idyllic postcard images – at 27, he was struggling to build a home or start a family.
“I thought America was the land of gold and silver, and the land of opportunities,” he recalls.
But soon after he arrived on US soil his American dream turned into a nightmare. Rather than Missouri, he found himself in Florida working as a room attendant in a hotel, without the salary or perks he had been promised. A human trafficker posing as an employment agent had helped Reloj find his job – the trafficker kept Reloj’s passport and threatened to deport him if he didn’t continue to work.
So Reloj continued, out of equal parts fear of the trafficker’s threat and the debt he had already amassed. There was no way he could return home.
You have to admire a man who will borrow $7,700 to travel 10,000 miles just to get a job as a janitor! I guarantee there are unemployed Missourians who will not take a job cleaning toilets as it is "beneath them." He must have been recruited with a promise of working in Branson which is a thriving entertainment centre. Avelino was expecting to be shown a lot of money once he arrived in the Show Me State but he took a nasty detour to Florida which is where many Americans go to die. With his passport stolen he had no choice but to work.
Month after month, and sometimes under the threat of a gun, Reloj was forced on a string of precarious jobs – in states as far afield as South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
Reloj has since escaped – he now lives in safety in California – but his case is just one of hundreds in which Filipinos have been trafficked to the United States with bogus job offers.
Some victims end up in dead-end jobs or with no work at all, others find themselves trapped in the households of wealthy Americans, expatriates, diplomats and the officers of international organisations.
I am sure it must be awful to be a stranger in a strange land being carted around at gunpoint to wash toilets in the Southern USA. Hot and humid in the summer and cold enough in the winter. Colder than the Philippines anyway. The article describes these states as "far afield" but the truth is all those states are grouped close together in the southeastern USA. This indicates there is a ring of human traffickers operating in the southern USA. How many more Pinoys are being forced to wash toilets at gunpoint? The article says "precarious jobs" which could be anything and not merely scrubbing the commode. Construction perhaps? Thankfully he made it out. What his status is now or how he did it the article does not say. But it does go on to quote a lawyer who assists trafficked Filipinos.
Last year, 352 Filipinos received help from the US Department of Health’s Trafficking Victim Assistance Programme. In spite of the distance, Filipinos accounted for more of those receiving aid than any other nation, including Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador – some of the countries targeted by Trump’s strict migration policies.
Martina E. Vandenberg, a human rights lawyer and president of the Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Centre in the US, says various factors have left Filipino workers particularly vulnerable.
“The power imbalance between employers and domestic workers is great and it’s particularly pronounced with Filipino workers,” says Vandenberg, who has represented several domestic workers exploited by diplomats. On the top of that, “they are strongly encouraged by their own government to remit money to their families back home. That forces the victims to tolerate levels of abuse that would be unthinkable.”
The remittances of some 10 million Filipinos living abroad set a record last year.
According to the central bank of the Philippines, cash remittances increased 4.3 per cent to US$28.1 billion, while remittances from the United States rose 5.5 per cent.
But while overseas workers are an essential part of the Philippines’ economy, they often become victims of unscrupulous recruitment agencies even before they leave home.
“The Philippines is planked by unethical and corrupt labour brokers who send abroad people with the full knowledge that they will be exploited and abused. The lack of accountability is a national shame,” says Vandenberg.
Now we come to the source of this scourge. Unethical labour brokers who have no accountability. "A national shame" she calls it. And where is the Philippine government in all this? How are these practices able to continue? As long as the nation relies on remittances to prop up the sagging economy there is no stopping it. More people are being trafficked from the Philippines than from Central America. A tiny archipelago nation 10,000 miles away has more people being trafficked than those nations right next door. That is rather astounding and not a good testament to the friendliness and hospitality for which Filipinos are known.
Next up is the story of a Pinoy who overstayed his visa. His name is Richard Cuanang. He overstayed on a J-1 visa and not a work visa but the principle is the same.
Cuanang, a pre-med graduate from Mariano Marcos State University in Batac, Ilocos Norte, came to the U.S. on a J-1 visa as an exchange student. He enrolled at the American Hospitality Academy in Hilton Head Island, SC. His visa expired one year after, in 2002. Everyone on a J-1 visa is obligated to go back to his or her country of origin; Cuanang opted to stay.
“I became undocumented when my visa expired,” he said. “I overstayed. I was planning to apply for an extension, or a new visa, but got derailed when I started earning. I had my apartment, I had a car. It seems that I was living a normal citizen’s life. I didn’t have any problem getting a job.”
He started working for hotels and resorts in South Carolina and became the vice president of the Filipino-American association of three counties in the state.
Richard's story starts off rather pathetically. How does one go from pre-med to hospitality? It's like he wasted four years of his life studying medicine so he could work at a hotel in Hilton Head! Why would anyone do that? Why didn't he continue his education and become a doctor? And why didn't he take the time to get a new visa or an extension? Was he working so much he could not take a day off to go through the process?
Cuanang’s immigration ordeal began on June 18, 2011. It was 11:30 pm, and he was driving home from work after a 13-hour work-shift. He did not stop at a red light.
Just before reaching the next traffic light, the car behind him started flashing its blue light. It was a police car. “The moment I pulled over, I said to myself, ‘this is it,’” Cuanang said.
“You have an outstanding warrant for an unpaid ticket,” the policeman said. “Do you happen to know or recall what the ticket was for?”
As it turned out, Cuanang had a ticket each for speeding and driving without a license, and had failed to pay a fine of $360.
It's always a traffic violation that will undo you. That's how they caught the Son of Sam. Well it was a parking ticket but still a vehicle violation. For ten years Richard worked in hospitality on Hilton Head Island. How did he do it? Did he have a fake social security number? Did people who knew him not know he was overstaying his visa? Many questions none of which are answered in this article.
On his second court date in October 2011, the judge told Cuanang that if he cannot not come up with an anchor by January 11, 2012, he will be subjected to a deportation proceeding.
An anchor is a reason or a person that can help someone facing an immigration court to remain in the U.S. An anchor could be a wife, children, or relatives who can and will sponsor a non-citizen for a legal permanent resident status, or what is commonly called the green card.
“My aunt (in the U.S.) said she cannot sponsor me. I do not have a child. So the only thing I could do is to marry a U.S. citizen,” Cuanang said.
On January 9, 2012, Cuanang got married to a woman from Savannah, Georgia, Jessica James (not her real name). “She needed someone to help her, to support her financially because she had an injury,” Cuanang said. “And I needed someone who can help me acquire a green card.”
Cuanang brought James and their marriage documents to his January 11 court appearance. The judge gave Cuanang six months to submit the necessary papers that will allow him to stay legally.
Three months into the marriage, however, their union started to unravel. James refused to help her husband. She was supposed to submit a revised copy of her birth certificate, the last document needed to fix Cuanang’s immigration status.
“She had all the time to do it,” Cuanang said. “I asked her to give our lawyer her birth certificate by February. She did not deliver.”
Cuanang knew then that it was the end of the road for him.
It's always a woman that will undo you. That's how they caught Samson. All his sham wife had to do was provide her birth certificate and she failed to deliver. What has become of her and this marriage of convenience? Did she get a divorce? Do they still communicate? Was the marriage consummated? Cuanang says it was the end of the road but that's not true. It was the beginning of the road back to the Philippines.
On May 8, Cuanang’s lawyer, James Cyrus, requested for voluntary deportation on Cuanang’s behalf. It took the judge only five minutes to grant his petition and set Cuanang’s departure date. He gave Cuanang until Sept. 5 to leave the United States.
“I already prepared myself,” Cuanang said about his voluntary deportation. “Even though ninety-nine percent of me does not agree, I am ready.”
“It made me a better person, a better member of my family,” he said, referring to his unauthorized stay in the U.S. “I was able to provide my family with everything that I was not able to provide them when I was in the Philippines. I tried to help them the best way I could.”
So he voluntarily left. Good for him. And good that he was able to provide for his family for ten years. But he did it all with zero integrity. He willingly and knowingly flaunted the law and continued to attempt to do so with a sham marriage. How any of this made him a better person is something only the amoral could ever understand.
Neither of these stories is unique. They are templates. They are typical of many Filipinos who seek work in the USA. The common denominator to both of these stories is that both men were unable to find economic security in the Philippines so they took a job washing toilets in the USA. One of them even threw away his chances at becoming a doctor for the opportunity to work in a hotel.
It would be pointless to offer any solutions. It might even be redundant to offer reasons why Filipinos do everything they can to reach the golden shores of the USA. Everyone knows the Philippines is corrupt and is lacking in economic opportunities. In the USA you can easily get a job washing toilets. In the Philippines you can't even do that without a whole lot of hassle and cost to yourself. And if you do land a job it might be on contract which means you are out after three months. Though finding the cause of these problems is easy there is no easy fix.
Ironically it is the Filipinos illegally staying in the USA so they can earn money that have now made it much harder for Filipinos to legally enter the USA and avail of economic opportunities.
