JUNE 20, 2016

NR # 4237

Stiffer penalties for foreigners illegally working in the country

A House leader is determined to pursue in the coming 17th Congress the enactment of a law
imposing stiffer penalties on foreigners illegally working in the country.
HB 5887 was passed by the House of Representatives on final reading and transmitted to the
Senate on January 6, 2016. It is aimed at strengthening the regulation of employment of foreign
nationals in the Philippines.
The bill, entitled An Act strengthening the regulation of employment of foreign nationals,
amending for the purpose Articles 40, 41 and 42 of Title II, Book One of Presidential Decree No.
442, as amended, otherwise known as The Labor Code of the Philippines, is in substitution of the
original HB 5470.
There is need to protect the welfare of the countrys human resource against undue incursion
of foreign labor in consonance with our commitments to international labor agreements, Rep. Karlo
Alexei B. Nograles, principal author, said, noting that the adjournment sine die of the 16th Congress
took its toll on a long list of House-passed measures, one of which is HB 5887.
Nograles is also chairman of the House Committee on Labor and Employment in the outgoing
16th Congress which sponsored and steered the bill through plenary until its final reading passage in
January.
Among others, the bill provides that an employment permit may be issued to a non-resident
foreign national but subject to the labor market test based on the non-availability of a qualified
Filipino national.
The measure provides that foreign nationals who are issued employment permits shall transfer
technology to Filipino understudies within a prescribed period, Nograles stressed.
It also requires that any non-resident foreign national who shall work without a valid
employment permit, as well as the employer who hires him, shall be imposed a fine of fifty thousand
pesos (P50,000) for every year of a fraction thereof.
Nograles added that violation of a provision of Title II, Book One of the Labor code of the
Philippines shall be penalized with a fine of fifty thousand pesos (P50,000) to One Hundred
Thousand Pesos (P100,000) and/or six (6) months to six years imprisonment.
He also added that HB 5887, seeks to update the terminologies used in the countrys policy
on employment of foreign nationals, in consonance with those we have used in our agreements with
the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Geneva Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
HB 5887 seeks to improve the mentioned policy according to our commitments to the WTO
and the GATS, and in preparation for the regional integration envisioned in the ASEAN Economic
community (AEC) Blueprint, Nograles concluded. (30) dpt