MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Immigration (BI) intercepted recently at Ninoy Aquino International Airport seven workers who tried to leave the country as tourists.
Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said they off-loaded five persons from their flight to Malaysia after it was found out they had spurious travel documents and were really headed to Australia for work.
They had fake employee IDs to make it appear that they have jobs here and are indeed legitimate tourists.
He added that BI personnel became suspicious after finding that the group was accompanied by a woman with pending cases of estafa and illegal recruitment.
Morente said the workers admitted paying between P125,000 and P175,000 to their recruiters to process their job applications and travel papers.