Filipino domestic workers
who get terminated in Hong Kong and try to wait for a new working visa in
Macau, beware.
A Filipina who stayed
in Macau as a visitor for the maximum visa-free period of 30 days then tried to
get her visa extended for another 30 days but failed, was left stranded for three
days at the border after being turned away by Hong Kong immigration.
The plight of the overseas
Filipina worker named Irene was made known to fellow Filipinos in Hong Kong by
a concerned friend who posted a call for help Monday on the Facebook page of the
FDW group, Social Justice for Migrant Workers (SJMW).
“Helping a kabayan po,
hingi po siya (ng) tulong, 2 days na po siya sa border ng Macao, hindi na siya
pinapasok, refused na din (lalo) siya sa Hong Kong….Waiting visa siya dito sa
Macau, then natapos na ang visa niya, hindi na siya pinapasok,” said the
concerned friend, Carina.
(Helping a fellow Filipina, she is asking for help. She has
been at the border with Macau, she has been refused entry, she was also refused
(more so) in Hong Kong. She was waiting for her visa here in Macau, but she
used up her (visitor’s visa) so she was not allowed back in).
According to SJMW’s Beth Rizardo, Irene did not have anything
to eat for the three days that she was at the land border between Hong Kong and Macau because her friends who
tried to send her food were not allowed in. They only managed to send drinks
through a Filipina cleaner at the border station.
After hearing about her plight, the Social Justice
administrators who include Beth immediately sent out an SOS to the Philippine
Consulate and the Migrant Workers Office in Hong Kong, who in turn, asked help
from their counterparts in Macau.
Assistant Labor Attache Tony Villafuerte who heads the MWO’s
assistance to OFWs section, said in a conversation Wednesday afternoon that
they had relayed the call for help to Macau Labor Attache Nena German, who helped
coordinate Irene’s immediate repatriation with the Consulate there.
According to both Beth and Carina, Irene was fetched at the
border by Consulate staff and escorted to Macau airport, where she was put on
a Manila-bound flight at 8:20pm last night.
Irene had told her friends that after using up her 30-day
visa in Macau, she exited through Portas do Cerco, the barrier gate separating
Macau from mainland China. But like many other Filipinos before her, she did a
quick turnaround, hoping to get another 30 days of visa-free stay. To her
dismay, she was given only three days.
She had planned to leave for Thailand supposedly
but the agency trying to work on her new employment visa advised her to
re-enter Hong Kong. Again, as many Filipinos would attest, this had been done
before, and they did manage to enter Hong Kong again, though their stay as
tourists is cut to just a few days.
But in a sign that authorities on both sides of the border
are now plugging this loophole, Irene was refused entry to Hong Kong. She then
tried to re-enter Macau, but was also stopped, leaving her in no-man’s land for
three days.
“That is why we keep telling them not to take the risk of
exiting to Macau, but to go back to the Philippines and wait for their visa
there,” said Villafuerte.
This is also why Philippine laws mandate that all new hires
must leave from the Philippines so they go through the whole process of getting
their contracts validated and their rights ensured in their host countries.
But the high cost of going through an agency, both for the
employer and the worker, and the long wait, not just for the visa, but also for
the processing of their documents, is what makes staying in Macau a more attractive
option to many.
In the case of Irene, the wait will now be longer, as the
agency in Hong Kong will have to look for a counterpart in the Philippines,
which by law, are the only ones allowed to process a new employment contract
for a departing Filipino worker.
If she gets lucky, her Hong Kong employer would be willing to
wait, and pay for the far higher fee charged by agencies to get her to come
back and work here again.
