Immigration blues
PEOPLE. THEY make an airline.
So proclaims a postered collateral of Cathay Pacific at a bus stop just outside Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok International Airport.
People. Bureau of Immigration people. They unmake an airport.
So experience shows at the DMIA, getting lesser known for Diosdado Macapagal International Airport, for the more appropriate Damn Moronic Immigration Agents.
January 21, 5:50 a.m. Past check-in at the Seair counter, our family group of eight adults and two children were on line to the immigration counters.
6:15 a.m. The public address system was already blaring “Seair flight DG 7924 bound for Hong Kong now boarding” and we barely moved a foot in the long queue of trudging travellers uniformly expressing disgust.
Of the six immigration counters, only two were manned. There were other immigration agents – I counted four outside the door marked “Bureau of Immigration” at the back of the counters – nonchalantly chit-chatting, viewing in some perversely sadistic way the chaos of herded passengers all wanting to get to their flights on time.
Then, came this balding immigration guy who squeezed past the lines holding aloft an embarkation card asking everyone if they had filled it up.
Idiot, I said not so silently as to be heard by those around me, the problem is not in that card. It is in you, insensate idiots. Why don’t you man your posts and get us all out here?
Yeah, they’re morons. A Caucasian at my back half-whispered. Always a pass through grinder at the DMIA (he made it sound damn ya) immigration, he said. They take the good memories out of my stay.
As though, we were heard, one more counter opened.
By the time we got through immigration, the Seair ground crew was rushing us to get to the plane as it was way past our flight time of 6:45 a.m.
I had in mind to demand a refund of our terminal fee. We did not even sit a second at the terminal, using it merely as an alleyway to the plane.
“We are sorry for our one-hour delay,” the captain of Seair flight DG7924 announced. “It is due to strict immigration security procedures.”
It took me supreme self-control not to shout “immigration idiocy!”
At Chek Lap Kok, the lines to the immigration counters were even longer. But processing was fast and efficient – taking us all of 10 minutes from the end of the line past the stamping of our passports.
No morons here eh, the Caucasian called out to me at the carousel as we waited for our luggage.
More fun in Hong Kong, I have written, somewhat, someway, somehow, here early this week.
Thereafter, it was back to the salt mines anew. Starting from – where else but – immigration at the DMIA.
January 25. Way past 11 a.m. Four counters were manned this time – one for foreign passport holders, three for returning – Filipino – residents.
There were almost as many natives as foreigners in the two flights that arrived. It would have made more sense if as many counters as those for locals were made for the foreigners. But sense is something alien to the immigration people at the DMIA.
How true, how true. Mabalacat’s double visionary Deng Pangilinan, a frequent flyer, said over coffee at Diva’s SM City Clark yesterday.
Idiocy reigns supreme at immigration branch in DMIA.
One time, Deng arrived late night and found but two immigration agents “zombie-like in going over travel documents” that he barely made it home – in Barangay San Francisco, all but seven kilometres away from the airport – before the cock crowed in the new day.
At another time, Deng said, there were very few at the counter for foreign passport holders. After finishing the line, the immigration staff closed the counter even when the other two counters were swamped with travellers.
It is standard operating practice in other airports – per Deng’s eagle-eyed observation – that once a counter gets through with the passengers lining to it, it is made available for the other, longer lines, so as not to inconvenience the passengers.
But no. The standard operating practice the immigration agents at DMIA know, and indeed, very adept at, is that which the public works engineers have crafted, mastered, grafted and corrupted. Or haven’t you heard of the mass pull-out and suspension of immigration agents assigned at the DMIA one or two years ago?
Yeah. Time for another mass purgation of the Bureau of Immigration branch at the DMIA.
More fun at Clark then.
So proclaims a postered collateral of Cathay Pacific at a bus stop just outside Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok International Airport.
People. Bureau of Immigration people. They unmake an airport.
So experience shows at the DMIA, getting lesser known for Diosdado Macapagal International Airport, for the more appropriate Damn Moronic Immigration Agents.
January 21, 5:50 a.m. Past check-in at the Seair counter, our family group of eight adults and two children were on line to the immigration counters.
6:15 a.m. The public address system was already blaring “Seair flight DG 7924 bound for Hong Kong now boarding” and we barely moved a foot in the long queue of trudging travellers uniformly expressing disgust.
Of the six immigration counters, only two were manned. There were other immigration agents – I counted four outside the door marked “Bureau of Immigration” at the back of the counters – nonchalantly chit-chatting, viewing in some perversely sadistic way the chaos of herded passengers all wanting to get to their flights on time.
Then, came this balding immigration guy who squeezed past the lines holding aloft an embarkation card asking everyone if they had filled it up.
Idiot, I said not so silently as to be heard by those around me, the problem is not in that card. It is in you, insensate idiots. Why don’t you man your posts and get us all out here?
Yeah, they’re morons. A Caucasian at my back half-whispered. Always a pass through grinder at the DMIA (he made it sound damn ya) immigration, he said. They take the good memories out of my stay.
As though, we were heard, one more counter opened.
By the time we got through immigration, the Seair ground crew was rushing us to get to the plane as it was way past our flight time of 6:45 a.m.
I had in mind to demand a refund of our terminal fee. We did not even sit a second at the terminal, using it merely as an alleyway to the plane.
“We are sorry for our one-hour delay,” the captain of Seair flight DG7924 announced. “It is due to strict immigration security procedures.”
It took me supreme self-control not to shout “immigration idiocy!”
At Chek Lap Kok, the lines to the immigration counters were even longer. But processing was fast and efficient – taking us all of 10 minutes from the end of the line past the stamping of our passports.
No morons here eh, the Caucasian called out to me at the carousel as we waited for our luggage.
More fun in Hong Kong, I have written, somewhat, someway, somehow, here early this week.
Thereafter, it was back to the salt mines anew. Starting from – where else but – immigration at the DMIA.
January 25. Way past 11 a.m. Four counters were manned this time – one for foreign passport holders, three for returning – Filipino – residents.
There were almost as many natives as foreigners in the two flights that arrived. It would have made more sense if as many counters as those for locals were made for the foreigners. But sense is something alien to the immigration people at the DMIA.
How true, how true. Mabalacat’s double visionary Deng Pangilinan, a frequent flyer, said over coffee at Diva’s SM City Clark yesterday.
Idiocy reigns supreme at immigration branch in DMIA.
One time, Deng arrived late night and found but two immigration agents “zombie-like in going over travel documents” that he barely made it home – in Barangay San Francisco, all but seven kilometres away from the airport – before the cock crowed in the new day.
At another time, Deng said, there were very few at the counter for foreign passport holders. After finishing the line, the immigration staff closed the counter even when the other two counters were swamped with travellers.
It is standard operating practice in other airports – per Deng’s eagle-eyed observation – that once a counter gets through with the passengers lining to it, it is made available for the other, longer lines, so as not to inconvenience the passengers.
But no. The standard operating practice the immigration agents at DMIA know, and indeed, very adept at, is that which the public works engineers have crafted, mastered, grafted and corrupted. Or haven’t you heard of the mass pull-out and suspension of immigration agents assigned at the DMIA one or two years ago?
Yeah. Time for another mass purgation of the Bureau of Immigration branch at the DMIA.
More fun at Clark then.
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 2:21 PM
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