Locsin: Give entry only to rich Chinese

Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Tuesday proposed a mechanism in visa issuance that would keep out prospective Chinese workers from entering the country as tourists, and let in “only rich and not needy Chinese.”

In a message on Twitter, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) chief proposed a novel way of screening visa applications from China, similar to Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s “social credit” ratings scheme.

“So a kind of screening, as I mentioned, should be framed, on which consulates can rely in judging applications for visas,” Locsin said.

“It is said Jack Ma has a company doing credit checks,” he said, referring to Sesame Credit, an affiliate of Alibaba’s Alipay subsidiary providing loans to Chinese based on their social credit rating.

Stealing jobs

According to Locsin, a similar scheme could be used in screening visa applications in Philippine Consulates in China.

“That way only rich and not needy Chinese are allowed in,” he said.

Locsin shared a netizen’s tweet reacting to an Inquirer report about Monday’s Senate hearing on the influx of presumed illegal Chinese workers in Metro Manila.

The DFA chief thanked Sen. Joel Villanueva, chair of the Senate labor committee, who expressed outrage at the revelation that 119,000 foreigners, mostly from mainland China, were able to skirt labor laws by entering as tourists and securing special permits to work in online gambling operations.

Villanueva had said Chinese nationals “have been stealing our jobs, taking away our homes and pilfering opportunities from Filipinos” by taking advantage of the loophole in labor and immigration policies.

Increased penalties

His panel is looking into the proliferation of presumed illegal workers from China, whose numbers have risen around Metro Manila to a level that does not match official foreign employment numbers.

At the House of Representatives, a bill passed on third reading seeking to increase penalties for foreigners who work in the Philippines illegally and their employers.

Voting 215-0 during its plenary session, the chamber passed House Bill No. 8368 amending the Labor Code of the Philippines. —With a report from Jerome Aning