The Show Goes On

‘From a certain point there is no more turning back. That is the point that must be reached.’ Franz Kafka

Retirement to a tropical island paradise is a familiar dream to many Americans, especially retired or separated servicemembers. As a disabled veteran, even with a very small pension, I was able to retire to the Philippines at the tender age of 49. No less familiar to the more faithful readers of this blog are the details of what followed. The terms of my retirement became completely involuntary when a fellow American – a fellow American veteran – stole my passport less than a month after my arrival. 

There is a chilling transition in the Tom Hanks movie called Cast Away in which a man named Tom Noland who survived a plane crash in the ocean has washed ashore on a small island in the South Pacific. After struggling to survive for several days he locates shelter in a cave. Trying to knock out a rotten tooth with an ice skate, he knocks himself unconscious. The screen dissolves from Noland’s fire inside the cave to a rockpool on a sunny day and the words FOUR YEARS LATER appear. A fish swimming in the water is suddenly speared and the camera tilts up to show us Noland, who now looks like Robinson Crusoe, standing several yards away on a rock. 

FOURTEEN YEARS LATER, I am closing out another year in the Philippines. A year ago I planned on not being here. I should have been home by now, but circumstances, once again, got in the way. The circumstances present a somewhat different approach to a country’s deportation of aliens. In the US, which has a sizeable population – in the millions – of the undocumented, deportations, whether voluntary or involuntarily, involve the detainment of aliens and their being boarded on one-way flights back to their country of origin. The length of their stay – or overstay – in the US isn’t an issue. Since they came to the US in a financially disadvantageous position, the paying of fines and/or past visas is overlooked. The only object is their removal from US territory. 

In the Philippines the process is, by comparison, draconian. Aliens are deported from the country, and thenceforth blacklisted by the bureau of immigration, preventing them from ever re-entering the country. But before the deportation takes place, aliens are required to pay penalties for every year of their overstay in the amount of 35,000 pesos per year. Since my overstay, due to the extenuating circumstance of having my passport stolen shortly after my arrival, and of not having a sizeable enough income to acquire a replacement passport, has lasted 14 years, the total amount of my overstay penalties is half a million pesos. 

That may sound like a lot of money, but it’s only $10K. The policy may also sound, to us, like extortion, but it’s worth remembering that this is not a developed country that has much experience with immigration – the incoming kind, that is. The Philippines has a great deal of experience, probably greater than any other nation on earth, with outgoing immigration. Their economy depends on an undisclosed, but probably enormous, influx of cash remittances every month sent by overseas Filipino workers. 

I hired a good lawyer last March, recommended to me by a mutual friend, to negotiate with the Bureau of Immigration on my behalf. He organized an appeal for a waiver of the overstay penalties. Because of pandemic restrictions in Manila, the process didn’t get started until September. And it was only after the appeal was filed in October that the lawyer gave me a ballpark figure of the full amount of my debt. Being a lawyer, alas, he didn’t tell me that my appeal didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Manila. I waited two months for the news, and at the beginning of December I was informed, via a ZOOM call, that the waiver had been denied. (In fact, I wasn’t told it had been denied until I asked.) The reason they gave for denying my appeal was the extended length of my overstay. Never mind the fact that I don’t have ten grand at the moment, but the debt must be paid. 

Once paid, I will have a choice between a voluntary deportation (an involuntary one involves arrest and detainment for an indeterminate period), which will also mean I’ll be blacklisted from ever returning to the Philippines, or extending long enough to acquire an SRRV – a special resident visa that will allow me to come and go as I please. The “special” visa costs another $3K. 

The blacklisting is a curious custom here. The list of people blacklisted by Philippine Immigration includes actors like Michael Caine who devoted a chapter of his autobiography, What’s It All About, to “My Worst Location” – when he acted in a movie called Too Late the Hero that was filmed in Luzon Province. His less than flattering picture of his experience prompted the touchy Philippine government to order Caine blacklisted. 

As for myself, more than one of my friends and family members has asked me why I would ever be interested in returning to a country that extorts visitors who are trapped by misfortune. Another friend who is familiar with the Philippines asked me why I would want to leave and why I would want to return to the States, which he says is a “shit show.” Never mind that paradise by any definition is hell if there is no way out. But so what if my homeland is a shit show – it’s MY shit show. And if, as some people believe, there is going to be a fight, then I want to be in on it. 

But this is my life, not a case study. Ultimately (in about a year), I will pay the penalties that I owe the Bureau of Immigration. By then I will have figured out whether I want to never come back here or get the special visa. Until then I have some advice for anyone thinking about travelling to a tropical paradise: secure your passport and your return ticket in an impregnable safe and never trust an expat.