A total of 125 Las Vegas residents reacquired their Philippine citizenship last Sunday October 11, during a consular outreach in this city.
Some 367 Filipino citizens, meanwhile, applied for the new machine readable passports (MRPs) during the said activity.
Records from the Philippine Consulate Los Angeles (PCG LA) showed that 125 Filipino-Americans in Las Vegas filed applications for dual citizenship. They took the oath of allegiance to the Philippine Republic during the outreach, making them Filipino citizens again.
These Filipinos lost their Philippine citizenship after being naturalized citizens of the US. But Republic Act 9225, or the Citizenship Retention and Reacquisition Act, allows individuals to reacquire said citizenship and become dual citizens of both the US and the Philippines.
As dual citizens, Filipinos in the US are allowed to own land and property as well as engage in business in the Philippines.
They are allowed to vote during Philippine elections. At the same time, they can also travel using a Philippine passport.
At the consular outreach last Oct 11, 367 Philippine passports were issued by PCG LA. The MRPs are the new travel document issued by the Philippine government as prescribed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
The ICAO is an agency of the United Nations that fosters the planning and development of air transport. It has required all its member states, including the Philippines, to issue MRPs before April 1st 2010.
The maroon-colored travel document is tamper-proof and is expected to make traveling faster and more convenient.
PCG LA had said that unexpired green Philippine passports may still be used after April 2010. But most countries will require travelers to hold an MRP for their travel. Green passport-holders may be asked to form a separate line for their information to be encoded, making the process slower.
The new maroon-colored MRP has a "machine readable zone" containing the personal data of the passport holder that can be read by a machine or computer.
The MRP’s superior security features compared to the green passports is also expected to eliminate the possibility of identity theft and acts of fraud.
( Published October 15, 2009 in Asain Journal Las Vegas p. A1 )
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