Marriage used to bait, traffic women
By Delmar Cariño
Northern Luzon Bureau
First Posted 23:18:00 02/20/2009
Filed Under: Regional authorities, Women, Crime
LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) has warned Filipino women to be extra careful in accepting marriage proposals from foreigners to avoid becoming victims of human trafficking.
Cherry Joy Veniles, senior emigrant services officer of the CFO’s Migrant Integration and Education Office, said the same word of caution holds true for Filipinos who applied for overseas work as complaints for breach of job contracts had increased over the years.
Veniles said based on cases that the CFO had investigated, six out of 10 marriages between Filipinos and foreigners “often turned out very bad with the Filipina wife later turning out to be missing or (being) sold as a commodity.â€
Contract violations
In the case of overseas workers, Veniles said violations of the terms of employment contract remained the main concern.
Veniles spoke at the Benguet State University here on Tuesday and urged relatives of overseas workers and those married abroad to coordinate with the CFO concerning problems relayed to them by their relatives who are working abroad as OFWs.
She said the CFO chose to visit Benguet since most immigrants from the Cordillera who went abroad came from Benguet and Mt. Province.
The CFO has identified the Cordillera as the fifth among the top 10 provinces in the country where the most number of OFWs and immigrants originated.
Nikkeijins
Benguet, like Davao, was also identified as the province where most “Nikkeijins†who go to work in Japan come from. “Nikkeijins†are Filipino descendants of Japanese nationals.
Veniles said not all overseas Filipinos are considered OFWs, which meant their problems are not all job related, to be handled by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.
There are Filipino immigrants who hold permanent resident visas whose problems could be worse than the ordinary OFWs, she said.
CFO records showed that 8.72 million Filipinos were abroad as of 2007. Of this number, 3.69 million held permanent resident visas, 4.13 million were OFWs while less than a million were considered irregulars, also known as TNTs (Tago nang Tago or undocumented Filipinos hiding from immigration authorities).
Holders of permanent visas often find themselves helpless since their stay in a foreign land is not guaranteed by job contracts but by their marriage to foreigners, Veniles said.
12 convictions
The prosecution, however, of human traffickers still leaves much to be desired, said Eumardo Tolosa, a member of CFO’s Task Force on Human Trafficking.
He said since the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act (Republic Act No. 9208) was enacted in 2003, only 12 people have so far been convicted
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