The Bureau of Immigration (BI) launched yesterday its upgraded electronic border control and information system designed to bolster the agency’s ability to prevent the entry of illegal aliens and improve its travel documentation processing system.
The system facilitates the faster immigration processing of the thousands of travelers who enter and exit the country via the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) and other major ports nationwide.
Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente led BI officials and employees in launching the enhanced BI information system (BIIS) at the arrival area of the NAIA 3 terminal.
A flagship project of the BI, the new BIIS now operates in all three terminals of the NAIA and the airports in Clark, Mactan, Davao, Iloilo, Laoag, Kalibo, and Zamboanga.
“Using the highest international standards, we put the ingenuity and creativity of the Filipino to work to produce a system that covers the myriad of migration and border concerns, and links up the many information sources and databases from our own records as well as domestic and international partners,” Morente said.
He disclosed that with the new automated system, immigration processing time in immigration counters is now down to 20-30 seconds from the previous average of 45-60 seconds per passenger.
Morente described the system as very comprehensive as it stores more than 320 million arrival and departure records in a centralized database. (Jun Ramirez)
