Facade of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (FILE PHOTO)
MANILA, Philippines — It remains a standing policy among immigration employees that they are prohibited from greeting passengers at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) “Merry Christmas,” Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco said.
On Monday, he cautioned them once more against making an impression that they were soliciting tips or presents from passengers.
But he also pointed out that “saying greetings is part of the Christmas tradition and Filipino culture.”
“There may be employees who probably just want to greet people with ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays’ without any other intention, and we cannot just impose sanction[s] against them for that,” he said.
He added that Filipinos are naturally welcoming, so it’s only natural for them to extend holiday greetings to people to convey the season’s joy.
‘Formality’
Ultimately, immigration officers should just “weigh the situation,” Tansingco said.
“If a passenger greets them first, of course, why would you ignore them? They say Filipinos are respectable, so there is nothing wrong in greeting them back, ‘Merry Christmas, welcome to the Philippines,’” he said.
“It depends also on how they say ‘Merry Christmas.’ If the greeting has a different meaning to it, or if the intention of the greeting is to solicit for something, that’s a no-no. Walang patawad ’yon [There’s no excuse for that],” he added.
Nevertheless, the public should not expect immigration officers to be “overly friendly.”
Tansingco said there should be “some level of formality” on their part since they’re representing the country in performing their duties.
Arrivals up
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) said it expected around 1.5 million arrivals this month — nearing the prepandemic level of 1.7 million.
The BI chief said the agency had beefed up its manpower and deployed augmentation teams and mobile counters to ensure smooth operations during the holiday season.
The total number of arriving passengers this year is already 79 percent higher than in 2022, Tansingco said, adding that the bureau started recording around one million monthly arrivals beginning in the second quarter.
This is in sharp contrast to the less than 100,000 arrivals per month in 2020, the height of the pandemic, he said.