Business and government officials say they are having an increasingly difficult time recruiting workers from the Philippines with the U.S. Embassy in Manila frequently refusing visas to allow Filipinos to transit the U.S. territory of Guam, the only route for workers from the Philippines to travel to reach the Marshall Islands.
“Ebeye Island has been having problems getting doctors and nurses already approved for recruitment because of the transit visa problem,” Health Secretary Justina Langidrik said at the weekend. “For Ebeye, even one doctor is a lot. If there is no ophthalmologist, then there is no service because they have very limited staff.”
Anil Construction CEO Carlos Domnick said even when Philippines accountants and construction supervisors he recruits have all of their documents in order, the U.S. Embassy is rebuffing them.
The country’s Foreign Ministry has weighed in, asking the U.S. Embassy in Majuro for help in navigating the transit visa process to enable skilled workers to be imported from the Philippines.
The Marshall Islands is an independent but U.S.-affiliated island midway between Hawaii and Guam. The U.S. provides grants that account for about 60 percent of the country’s national budget, and operates an important ballistic missile defense testing facility at Kwajalein Atoll.
U.S. Embassy Majuro Charge d’Affaires Doug Morris said in response to concerns of government and business officials in the Marshall Islands that the Majuro embassy has no authority to involve itself in decisions of the Manila embassy.
“A vice consul has full legal discretion to make a decision (rejecting or granting visa applications),” Morris said. “An ambassador cannot go to a vice consul and tell him to issue a visa.”
Still, Morris said the Majuro embassy is doing what it can to help improve understanding of the situation in Majuro for U.S. Embassy staff in Manila. “We’ve been engaged with the Manila embassy for the past year (on this issue),” Morris said.
Even though Filipinos recruited for jobs in the Marshall Islands need to transit the Guam airport only long enough to change planes, Guam is a U.S. territory and anyone applying for a U.S. visa is assumed to be an intending immigrant to the U.S. unless they can prove otherwise. The way regulations are structured, the onus is on the applicant to prove they are qualified for a visa and are not planning to illegally migrate to the U.S.
Morris, who previously worked as a vice consul in the Manila Embassy, said his embassy is preparing a briefing paper on the Marshall Islands for the U.S. Embassy in Manila that officials hope will provide better understanding of employment needs in the Marshall Islands.
Until recently, the Ministry of Health — which regularly recruits specialist medical doctors and nurses from the Philippines — experienced few problems with the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Langidrik said. “Now, there are long delays,” she said. “When that happens, sometimes people who’ve been recruited change their mind and we have to go through the recruitment process again.”
“I have been very frustrated with the U.S. Embassy in Manila,” Domnick said. “They give our hired workers from the Philippines a hard time.”
Domnick said frequently U.S. Embassy officials “deny the worker their transit visa for stupid reasons like Otransit via Japan.’” But, he said, there are no scheduled flights from Japan to the Marshall Islands. “And worst is our workers just need the U.S. transit visas to transit through Guam and they will stay at the Guam airport for only three hours, they do not leave the airport,” Domnick said.
The result of delays or denial of a transit visa by the US Embassy in Manila “is very frustrating because our hired workers have worked very hard and spent a lot of money to get their police clearance, health certificate, HIV clearance, school transcripts, etc. and we do a lot of work and spend a lot of money from this end to advertise the position, get the entry permit, and get the work visa.”
Morris pointed out that there are many human factors that come into play in the visa-issuing process. “We might hear that the visa applicant is the perfect guy for the job, but he may present himself poorly at the U.S. Embassy in Manila,” he said.
“We’re attempting to create for Manila a description of the circumstances here, including salary ranges for the government and private sector,” Morris said.
The aim is to provide perspective on the Marshall Islands that may be missing from the evaluation of people who’ve been recruited. Morris said that if a refrigeration engineer can’t get a transit visa so he can’t work on Ebeye Island there may not be anyone else with refrigeration skills and it could end up causing a major health and humanitarian situation triggering the need for a more costly U.S. response.
Generally, he added, medical doctors have an easier time getting visas.
But nurses “are trickier,” largely because there is such a huge demand for nurses around the world, including the U.S., he said. Would a nurse making $12,000 in the Philippines want to go to the U.S. where she could make $70,000? he asked. This is the type of decision facing visa-issuing U.S. embassy officials worldwide, he added.
But the bottom line is that it is the Manila embassy’s decision. “They make the call, and we can’t do more than what we are doing,” Morris said.
