The Department of Foreign Affairs revealed that they have resorted to asking trivia Filipino show business questions to detect impostors who are applying for legitimate Filipino passports.
The DFA said in a senate hearing that this is one of their ways to detect foreign nationals applying for Philippine passports. Most of them are from China.
“They have a spurious birth certificate. They can memorize everything there—the name of father, name of mother. So we think outside the box,” Foreign Assistant Secretary Adelio Angelito Cruz said in an Inquirer report.
“If you’re really a Filipino, who was Nora Aunor’s boyfriend? You’re saying you’re 34 years old. Who was Sharon Cuneta’s longtime boyfriend? These are facts that only Filipinos know, right?” he added.
Cruz also revealed that impostors who cannot speak Filipino have resorted to pretending to be deaf and let their companion transact for them.
The DFA said they have a consular officer who can do sign language and later on verified that the applicant is not a real Filipino.
“I was told it’s very, very expensive to acquire genuine PSA documents,” Cruz said.
The DFA official added that some were able to get a genuine birth certificate due to the cracks in the system by filing late registration of birth at the local civil registrar’s office.
At the DFA Paranaque office alone, around 58 Chinese nationals have been prevented from acquiring Philippine passports. The scheme started even before the pandemic according to the DFA.
No estimated number of how many foreign nationals were able to acquire legitimate Philippine passports.
