Senator Sherwin Gatchalian filed a resolution seeking an investigation into an “alarming” proliferation of fake birth certificates and late registration of birth in the Philippines.
Gatchalian told reporters on Thursday that the move is aimed at preventing “unscrupulous” individuals, including foreign syndicates from securing government-issued identification to evade existing immigration laws and freely perpetrate crimes, such as money laundering and human trafficking, in the country.
“Syndicates may be behind the proliferation of fake birth certificates as well as the apparent abuse of the late birth registration system,” he wrote in the measure.
Senate Resolution 1053 was filed amid the ongoing controversy hounding the identity of embattled Bamban Mayor Alice Guo, who was scrutinized due to her alleged links to the illegal Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) hub in Tarlac.
Gatchalian cited a report from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) which confirmed that they have found “several discrepancies” in Guo’s birth certificate, particularly the absence of government records proving the existence of Amelia Leal—the named mother of the suspended mayor— and the purported marriage between Amelia and her father, Angelito Guo.
PSA’s finding shows that Amelia Leal does not have any birth, marriage, or death certificate.
“Despite Mayor Guo's own representation [in the Senate hearings] that her father is Chinese and a Chinese passport holder, the birth certificates of Mayor Guo, as well as her siblings, Seimen Leal Guo and Shiela Leal Guo, indicated Angelito Guo's citizenship as Filipino. All three birth certificates were subject to late registration,” Gatchalian pointed out.
The senator also noted that the investigations conducted by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), the Bureau of Immigration (BI), and the PSA “have brought to light the alarming proliferation of fake or spurious birth certificates.”
In a Senate deliberations on its 2024 budget, PSA said at least 308 fake birth certificates were used for Philippine passport applications from January to September last year.
Six of these birth certificates belonged to foreign nationals who were issued Philippine passports.
The PSA data also show an average of 972,830 delayed birth registrations annually from 2023 to 2022.
While roughly 3.7 million did not have birth certificates or were not registered out of the 111 million Filipinos in 2020.
The DFA, on the other hand, has prevented over a hundred attempts of foreigners, applying for Philippine passports using spurious documents, with over 55 active cases referred to law enforcement agencies.
