On April 26, 2019, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) posted on its Immigration Helpline PH Facebook page a link to an article entitled “DOLE cannot process foreign workers permit on its own – Bello“. Silvestre Bello III is the current Secretary of the Department of Labor and Employment.

This may be the BI’s response to numerous speculations that Special Working Permits (SWP) and Provisional Working Permits (PWP) may no longer be applied at the BI. Contrary to these speculations, the BI has been accepting SWP and PWP as usual and it has not released any official document stating any changes with the venue of applications of the said applications as of this writing.