NEWSFLASH

TIGHT WATCH OVER UNACCOMPANIED MINORS LEAVING RP

Manila, March 5, 2000 The Bureau of Immigration (BI) has started a crackdown on minors traveling without parents and guardians, following reports of a new racket involving child brides.

BI Commissioner Rufus Rodriquez ordered officials at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) over the weekend to stop unaccompanied minors from leaving the country, citing foreign news accounts of young Filipino women offered as part and parcel of some American tour packages.

Under Philippine law, minors are allowed to travel alone if their parents apply for a special permit from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

Rodriguez said the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) had called his attention to the large number of Filipino girls, some only 13 years old, being sold to American men for $2,000 (P80,000).

DFA Undersecretary Benjamin Domingo quoted a Los Angeles news report on the ordeal of Filipino minors stranded in the US after being abandoned by their American “fiancés.”

Domingo warned that a proposed “Freedom from Sexual Trafficking Act” now pending in the US Congress penalizes both exploiter and victim, and also allows the US government to slash aid to nations that fail to crackdown on sexual traffic of women and children.

According to the newspaper article, US travel agencies offer American men a tourist package that includes hotel arrangements and introduction to families willing to sell school-age girls. They choose a fiancée and pay her parents P80,000 for their legal consent to marriage. The girl gets a fiancée visa.

The American man has 90 days to decide whether he wants to marry the girl, but many dump the girls after enjoying months of sexual relations, the news report claimed. Many foreign fiancees end up becoming prostitutes.