Legal Alien

I have finally been given my work permit over 6 months since arriving in The Philippines. There's bureaucratic efficiency for you. What I don't understand is that you're not really meant to work until you're given the work permit but as it takes so long, what else are you meant to do?

You win a contract, you're given a month to mobilise and get started but it takes 6 months to obtain the work permits. God only knows what the process involves. The company lawyers in Manila became rather agitated when I criticised them for the time the whole process took, but it was them that told me it would only take a few weeks to obtain the permit. Still, why should they care, they get paid regardless of win, lose or draw. It's only the people like us who live in the real world that get paid by results.

The final step in obtaining the work permit necessitated yet another trip to Manila to be finger-printed like a common criminal. The immigration office was better than the one where I have my interview (see my earlier posting) but was equally chaotic. The sordid business of being fingerprinted was done in the waiting hall. A rotund looking official was sat on a stool by the window with a the required forms, a pad of ink and an inky roller. When it's your turn to be finger-printed, she grabs your wrist like an irritated mother would grab a child's hand, tutting and scowling with intolerance if you try to anticipate her moves and assist so the only thing to do is be totally compliant. Without a smile or any sign of good manners she takes each and every finger and thumb and rolls it in the thick sticky ink and then rolls it across the form in the allocated spot. I have to admit, for each digit I tried my hardest to smear the prints as my finger left the page as I don't see why I should be finger-printed when I haven't broken the law. Once completed you're tossed aside and left to find your own means of cleaning off the ink.

This form then goes off for processing and you have to wait while this is done. During this time a peddler came into the offices selling bootleg DVDs and did a roaring trade with the finger-printing officer whilst she made all her other victims wait as she scoured the DVDs for her coming evening's entertainment.

Following the finger-printing, and to make me feel even more like a criminal I had to have the mugshots with the height indicators behind me, being photographed from the front, each side plus a quarter-on shot. Then I had to be digitally finger printed in addition. My guess is that all this data is flogged to the US government as a sideline in revenue collection for The Philippines government. We're all being put on a database by stealth.