Published in Today
(March 04, 2000)
Filipino girls – unless accompanied by their parents – will not be allowed to leave the country following reports that many of them are being sold to Amercian men through tour packages.
Immigration Commissioner Rufus Rodriguez has ordered BI officials, to monitor children traveling abroad.
Rodriguez issued the order after being informed by the Department of Foreign Affairs that a large number of Filipino girls, some as young as 13, are being sold for sex by their parents to unscrupulous tour operators.
The BI chief’s attention was called by DFA Undersecretary Benjamin Domingo to a news item ina Los Angeles newspaper about the ordeals of the Filipino minors in the hands of American men who had bought the girls from their parents.
Though travel agencies in the United States, Americanman fly to the Philippines and, with help of tour guides, are taken to several places to meet the girls and their mothers.
The mothers of the girls are paid $2,000 and made to sign an affidavit of consent for the child to be married to the American and taken to the US on a fiancee visa.
Once in the US, the American has 90 days to decide whether to marry the girl.
More often than not, the men do not want to get married. They only want sex, forcing many of the girls to become prostitutes after being abandoned by their would-be partners.
DFA has warned that under the proposed Freedom from Sexual Trafficking Act now pending in the US congress, even victims will be penalized, thus, subjecting the Filipino minors to “double victimization.”
Bert Ignacio
