The Bureau of Immigration reported some days ago that 530 foreign investors and their dependents have availed themselves of the agency's special visa for the employment generation (SVEG), which in turn gave at least 35,000 new full-time and regular jobs to Filipino workers.
A report submitted to Commissioner Marcelino Libanan showed that 141 Korean investors topped the list of the visa applicants since the scheme was implemented in April last year.
Bureau of Immigration Spokesman Floro Balato Jr. said that aside from Koreans, the list of applicants includes 43 Chinese, 27 Americans, 19 Taiwanese, 16 Britons, 15 Indians, 11 Japanese, 11 Australians, 8 Malaysians, 6 Singaporeans, and 4 (!) Germans.
Other nationalities who availed themselves of the job visa are Austrian, Bangladeshi, Belgian, Danish, Dutch, Egyptian, Finnish, Greek, Hong-Kong, Indonesian and many more.
Balato said that as of May 2010 344 principal applicants and 186 of their dependents have availed themselves of the job visa and paid the Philippine government more than 6,7 million Pesos in immigration fees.
