Pinoys right to travel

Sometime last year in one of my travels to Hong Kong from Cebu, the airline refused to check me in because I did not have a booked return ticket.  I had an old, unused, and unbooked return ticket with me then as I had been my practice not to book my return flight as there are times I had to extend my stay in Hong Kong.  In a couple of times, I traveled further booking a flight to Canada and the US from Hong Kong.

The airline told me that I have to have a booked return ticket as Immigration would allow me to travel without a booked return ticket.  I later realized that the Bureau of Immigration (BID) had implemented new more strict procedures to ensure that no tourists cum overseas workers are able to exit the country.   

I thought about it and came to the conclusion that it must be unconstitutional as the Philippines is a democratic country and the right to travel must be one of the basic freedom of its citizens, meaning BID does not have the right to stop a citizen from traveling to another country.  Of course, these BID proactices would have to be first questioned before the Supreme Court.

This also means that there is really no need for overseas workers to obtain exit permits from any government agency to go to other countries to work.  So, overseas workers do not need to pay any fees to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) that keep on increasing all the time but have not benefited the overseas workers.  One thing with these two government agencies is that they are good at collecting fees but not in servicing and accommodating the needs of overseas workers when these are required.

Last month, I came across an article at the Philippine Daily Inquirer that discussed this issue written by Roberto Tiglao (see http://opinion.inquirer.net/7600/ofw-%E2%80%98exit-permits%E2%80%99-unconstitutional).