Working in the Philippines- From the Web Site of The US Embassy, Manila

This information is reproduced here in its entirety under Creative Commons license for the information of all. The original publication can be found at http://manila.usembassy.gov/wwwha006.html#Work

Non-Resident Aliens Who Intend to Work in the Philippines

All foreign nationals seeking admission to the Philippines for the purpose of employment, all non-resident foreign nationals already working in the Philippines, and all non-resident foreign nationals admitted to the Philippines on on-working visas, who wish to work in the Philippines, regardless of the source of compensation and duration of employment are required by the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to secure an Alien Employment Permit (AEP).

Where to Apply

Foreign nationals can apply for an AEP at the nearest Philippine Embassy or Consulate. Local employers who wish to hire the services of a foreigner can apply on behalf of the foreign national at the nearest Regional Office of the DOLE. Foreign nationals who are already in the Philippines should apply through their prospective employers with the nearest Regional Office of the DOLE. A DOLE AEP frequently-asked-question sheet is available here.

Validity of AEP

The period of validity of an AEP will depend on the nature of the position occupied by the foreign national, whether elective, technical, advisory or supervisory.

Exemptions

All members of the diplomatic services, foreign government officials accredited with the Philippine government, missionaries engaged in missionary work only, members of international organizations such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and specialized agencies of the United Nations are exempted from securing an AEP.

NOTE: In support of the UN Spouse Employment Policy, the Philippine government has also exempted the spouses of members of international organizations from securing an AEP. Spouses however, are required to file an application for a Certificate of Exemption from the DOLE’s Bureau of Local Employment (BLE). Missionaries or religious workers who intend to engage in gainful employment are not exempted from securing an AEP.

Penalties

Aliens who are found working without an employment permit as required by law, are penalized with a fine ranging from one thousand pesos (P1,000.00) to ten thousand pesos (P10,000), or imprisonment ranging from three months to three years, or both. In addition to such penalties, any alien found guilty shall be summarily deported upon completion of service of sentence.

Resident Aliens and Immigrants Who Intend to Work in the Philippines

Resident Alien – refers to any foreign national who is allowed by law to reside indefinitely in the Philippines

All foreign nationals admitted to the Philippines as immigrants, who wish to seek employment, and all resident aliens already working in the Philippines, irrespective of the source of compensation and nature and duration of employment are required to secure an Alien Employment Registration Certificate (AERC) from the DOLE’s Regional Office.

Where to apply

The resident alien or the employer shall apply at the nearest Regional Office of the DOLE where the employer-establishment is located. Requirements for application of an AERC can be found at the Bureau of Local Employment website: www.ble.dole.gov.ph.

Validity of AERC

An AERC issued shall be valid only for the position and employer which it was issued, unless otherwise cancelled or revoked for cause.

The visa gives the holder multiple entry and exit privileges similar to the SRRV (Special Retirement Resident Visa) but without the need to deposit large amounts of money with a local bank for six months. The SVEG holder is allowed to live in the Philippines as a permanent resident and can own and operate a business, according to the existing restrictions placed on all foreigners in business.

While this new visa doesn’t allow you to have 100% of a business that previously required 60% local ownership or gives you the ok to practise a profession on the foreign prohibited list, it does open the doors to those who don’t have a Filipina spouse or wish to get married again merely to live here.

Your business must employ the ten locals in non-domestic roles, so you can’t include your Yaya, maid, driver and yardboy on the payroll. If your employee numbers slip below ten you should contact the Bureau of Immigration immediately and discuss the matter. You won’t be deported in the middle of the night but it does pay to work with the BI proactively.

The family fish farm or piggery may be a viable business but knowing how to manage your investment and protect your capital is vital. In my book I talk about investment opportunities in the Philippines and highlight many of the dangers. I also talk about whether selling up everything is a good idea in the first place.

I always advise keeping something in reserve. Always have enough for a plane ticket home and NEVER spend it. Never. If things get so desperate you need to spend it to survive, then spend it on what it was put away for, a plane ticket back to where you can sort yourself out.

Should you invest in the Philippines or leave it invested offshore, back home? My advice is to invest offshore and play with the left over in the Philippines. Unless you are a natural businessman and have had a lot of experience running successful businesses back home, be very wary of trying your hand in a foreign country with a very different culture and a language you don’t understand.

Keeping your money offshore also keeps it safe from the relatives you will inherit when you marry. Your new wife may be a perfect companion for you but who knows what her family might do if they sense an opportunity. Remember the recent global meltdown and the dot com crashes of a few years ago eroded the value of investments and savings for many retirees. While the value will creep back over time, meanwhile they might be doing it tough. Imagine how much tougher it would be in a foreign country, with perhaps some personal health issues and an pack of inlaws you don’t trust.

Give things some serious though before committing and remember, you can get money into the Philippines a lot easier than trying to get it back out again.

Starting a small business in a foreign country requires a lot of research and understanding of local conditions. Most business ventures will also require some capital, but there are many that can be started with a very small amount of money.  Perry and I have both successfully operated a number of small businesses and our experience and advise could be invaluable to anyone contemplating doing the same. We have also had some failures and learning about these can be just as helpful.

First of all you need to realise that at the low end of the ‘investment of capital’ scale, your ROI, or return on investment will be similarly low. Here you are simply buying yourself a job. If you invest more money you will move more into the true business owner category. This means you have a staff working for you and managers you can trust to leave to look after your business while you are absent.

Give some thought to your choice of business. You don’t want to compete with the locals on anything labor intensive unless you hire a few to do the manual work. Who wants to slave in the hot sun all day for five bucks? Anything that will earn a decent return will limit your target market as there might be 90 million people in the country but fewer than half have much in the way of discretionary income.

The upside of starting your own business is that if it doesn’t work out as planned, you can shut it down and move on to the next project. Do give things a decent go but don’t be afraid to change horses midstream, especially if the nag is drowning under you. Dis is da pilipeens and there will be plenty of reasons why something didn’t work out as planned and most will be beyond your control.

The most important thing to have is the right mindset or attitude. There is work to be had. You do have skills someone will pay you for. Never lose track of these thoughts and you will be successful. To ensure success you might have to adapt what you consider as a suitable job, good conditions, fair pay etc.

The locals work longer for less and put up with more than we would ever suffer. In many ways we are spoilt back home as far as our working conditions are concerned. But you are not ‘back home’, are you? The whole reason for being here looking for a job is because you wanted to change your circumstances and take some chances.

The next important thing to have is a ticket home. Always have enough to get you back to where you came from and NEVER spend it. In 2004 I had to decide whether I hung in there a few more weeks and hopefully the man I was working for would come good with my salary and back pay… or cut and run back home for a few months to find a job, make some cash and keep the family alive. I took my airfare out of the bank and used it for that purpose before everyday living would have eaten into it and left me with far fewer options!

Look for a job long before you need it. People can sense when you are desperate and your chances of success drop dramatically for some reason. If you are in the fortunate position of wanting a job but not yet needing one, for some reason you get swamped with opportunities. It’s a bit like when you are single and can’t get a date then you meet a nice girl and all of a sudden every woman in town is after you.

Timing is everything and what usually happens to me is I get one job offer while still waiting to hear from the better job I applied for at the same time. You can avoid this by going for just the one position at a time, but then you need the luxury of not needing a job right away as mentioned above.

When you do have a job, don’t abuse it. Make sure you save at least 10% of your salary no matter how low the pay is. Pay yourself first, then your debts and then live with your means on what is left. Cut your cloth to suit and you are a free man. You can always resign when you want to and not fear being fired. I try to have three months living expenses stashed away so I can be flexible whether working for a salary or working for myself like I am doing now.

Finally, don’t be too proud to accept things are beyond your control and get the heck out of there. Get back to the States or wherever you can get a job, save up some money and then go back and give it another go if you feel you must. When I had to bail out and head home for four months in 2004 I copped a lot of nasty flak on the bulletin boards I posted on. So what? Remember, those that mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind.

The attitude is all too often one of ‘you are lucky I give you a job’ rather than being valued as a part of the team that helps the owner make money. The fact that everyone is replaceable and there are millions to replace you probably helps this thinking. Added to that the attitude of the well off in most Asian countries to the less fortunate is one we also had in our western societies, albeit back in the middle ages or during the industrial revolution.

Expect to work many hours. Not longer hours, they use 60 minutes as the standard there too, they just expect you to be at your desk for longer. Even if you and everyone else isn’t really achieving anything, it is the perception of how loyal you are to the company that counts. I have worked in companies where everyone has to be there on Saturday and the day is spent wishing we were with our families and doing little productive work if any. What’s the point?

The point is the culture expects people to pay lip service to the hierarchy in place. You will refer to your managers as “Sir Joseph” and “Ma’am Ling Ling”. They will also refer to each other by qualification such as “Attorney Bong” and “Engineer Gusing”. So that should give you an inclination of how the work place operates.

You might not get much of a meal break. You could be expected to arrive at 8am and not leave until 6om, except Saturdays where they will let you come later and go earlier… perhaps. Forget workers compensation if you are injured on the job. There is more chance they will fire you than pay for your medical treatment, something I have witnessed first hand at a Cebu ESL facility with one of the other American teachers.

If you are too ill to come to work, the local practise in smaller firms is to find someone to replace you from your family. Quite an acceptable practice in shops and on building sites but it doesn’t work for us in more executive positions. I had a fellow ESL teacher commit suicide because he was unable to return to work immediately after suffering a heart attack, had no money to return to the USA for treatment and saw no way out other than a bullet to the temple.

There are good firms to work for and if you come as an Expat with the fat cat salary pack, life is very, very good. You will be treated well and think things are little different to the office back home. But they are very different for the local employees and if you are ever a ‘local hire’, you will quickly see the differences. Having worked at a large firm in Cebu that had both expats and local hires as well as Filipino employees, there were three different levels of pay and conditions in force.

For more in-depth, first hand advice and information about this topic, check out my eBook, ‘Making A Living In The Philippines’, also available as a paper back from www.lulu.com.

The best paid job I had was teaching English in Manila to Korean students. It paid US$1,000 per month in salary, plus free accommodation, meals (you learn to love Kim Chee) laundry and a flight back to my family in Cebu every month. Mind you, when the off season hits you might find the employer wanting to cut back on your salary and conditions and have you find your own place to stay.

The worst rate of pay I experienced was either working as a Dive Master on a per diver basis and there is a major problem with the tourist trade such as bad weather, international terrorism or a pandemic of some kind; or writing. I once wrote hundreds of short essays varying in language points, grammar useage and length for the equivalent of a tenth of a cent per word. You have to write a lot of words to feed your family at that rate!

I also had a job as Travel Editor for an expat owned company that paid less than US$300 a month plus ‘per diems’. This meant I had to live away from my family for several weeks at a time and stay in dumps of hotel room and eat on less than ten bucks a day. I did get to see a lot of the country though and it was quite an experience but as a money maker, not what I would call a going concern!

If you can arrange the expat fat cat salary pack before you go, then do it. You will get comparable salary to what you made back home plus allowances and freebies such as car and driver, maid, private schooling for the kids and flights home every year or so. Providing there isn’t another global meltdown or Asian financial crises, you should have a ball.

Of course there is always the ‘black’ job market. Plenty of legitimate businesses such as bars and resorts have expat managers who are not legally permitted to work. There are also many businesses owned by an expat that have a local front person, often ostensibly the ‘manager’, but reporting directly back to the quiet Kano sitting in the corner.

There are jobs to be had teaching English, mainly to Koreans, and also providing services that require either native English speakers or as talent in commercials. These jobs do exist and I have done all of them but TV and Radio work is often a case of feast or famine.

However, if you live here long enough, pretty soon something will come along. You might have a lot of competition for the post but then nothing ventured, nothing gained.

To find these types of roles you normally have to be very highly skilled in some specialized area, or experienced in management. These opportunities are also usually sourced outside of the Philippines so the place to look is where you are now. Another consideration is that these roles are often sourced from within a company meaning that you would need to be working for a large international company and wait for a suitable opportunity to arise for a posting to the Philippines.

These professions include doctor, lawyer, dentist, psychiatrist, engineer, pharmacist and accountancy just to name a few. When it comes to investing in a business, there is a long list of prohibited businesses and then a large number of businesses which require 40% or more local ownership. This means Filipino partners which can be problematic if you prefer to be on your own.