The Bureau of Immigration

Does anyone know if entry allowed with balikbayan visa ?

 

SRRV visa's are still issued by the Bureau of Immigration , its just that the Dept. of Tourism facilitates the issuance.. Anyone who says that business and profit is not in the interest of the government obviously hasn't left the house since this Covid 19 fiasco started..INMHO

 

Our SRRV consultant seems to look on the deposit cash outs as rather routine and sometimes clients do come back. PRA actually pays the private PRA consultants to do cashouts as well and she was making fairly good income handling that. It is a pretty honest process too, you do get the money back in a reasonable time when you leave the PRA. To come back I got the impression that you just start all over again, they probably do not care if you left before. I suppose there are few cash outs because people need access to their money or maybe divorce or disillusionment with the country. I will say that it is easier and lower cost to have a retirement visa here than other Asian countries where it is even possible.


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I found this on SRRV facebook page. PRA is trying to help but BI is not listening. Please note that PRA is a private company associated with the DOT.

 

Judging from the SCORES of comments on the PRA facebook page, many members are exremely unhappy. Wow.PRA wants to run their mission/business to have Customer satisfaction but BI doesn't really consider letting SRRV in as they do 13a. There may actually be some SRRV people cashing in deposits, at least that is what they say. They feel like they were treated unfairly because they went through even more than 13a to get these visas (they spent and tied-up a lot more money). You can see the comments on the PRA facebook page. I am rather bewildered myself but then again, BI is not a business so in a way I understand their motives; it is probably just a numbers game to BI and they just want to deal with as few returnees as possible with the manpower they have. PRA Money is not an issue to them.

 

We can all gripe/moan call it what we want, as things stand, if you are not married to a Filipina be a Diplomat or Air crew you are not going to get in

 

You are right; the price we apparently must pay for not being immigrants is a higher risk of unbelievable bureaucracy or deportation if payments are not kept up to date. So be it. We will comply 100%. That is our agreement with PRA.

The fact that SRRV is not given the same return privileges as true 13A immigrants is a surprise to most. Actually I am OK with that if only because I understand the business and government dichotomy. I do wish the PRA mission statement had been less positive and that they had warned us as to just how fragile it’s commitment to it’s benefits of return at any time actually was. Maybe they didn’t know. Probably. BI is in charge. We should have been smarter; we should have known. “Fool me once, shame on you”. But fool
Me twice, shame on me.

I can really understand and empathize with the SRRV holders overseas that were not so lucky in their timing. They were fooled “once”. I am glad it wasn’t me.

“No visa here is permanent” as you say and at the opposite end is that the US green card that is as close to permanent as you get. But that is not guaranteed either. That gives us an added strong encouragement to vote for an administration in November that generally favors a more level playing field in such matters.

I would actually go for encouraging the asawa to swear for a dual citizen approach, and myself become an unsworn “immigrant”, where she is a citizen, with all its rights and privileges, but that is a lost cause from the start. As an American citizen she absolutely refuses to take an oath to another country, even her homeland. I support her 100%.

It is not all about living up to PRA mission statements, Apparently they cannot. But what us most important is living a life, here it at home, and I suppose being “ethical” in the case of a spouse who refuses to renounce but it is disloyalty no matter what anybody tells you. Documented. Sworn. That is important too.


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