A migraine called the Bureau of Immigration

First, it flunked the test of obedience. Now, the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation (BID) is guilty of in-your-face defiance.

By disobeying the express order of the President Benigno S. Aquino III not to use his image or photo in any way that smacks of political grandstanding and unfettered patronizing, the BID, whose charter dating back to 1935 is as antiquated as the mindset of some of the officials that run the agency, is showing its true color: it causes migraine to Malacanang.

It can recalled that immediately after President Aquino came to office, he warned all government offices against using his photo from being displayed in billboards and posters that ‘announce’ his ascendancy as President, or that tend to show his pre-eminence as the First Gentlemen of this hapless, undisciplined and unruly country called the Philippines.

It was a simple, but bold, governance masterstroke. Like the prohibition of the use of ‘wang-wang’, it was a sudden departure from the political-bullying culture of the era of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, whose photo with that perennial smirk—including those of her officials’—had adorned billboards, posters, handbills, calendars, forms, souvenir fans, pins, buttons, and shirts posters for nine years that I am just recovering from our polluted landscape.

The BID defied that order. It printed millions of departure and arrival cards with the photo of P-Noy.

When the President heard about it, he fumed and castigated the BID. We don’t know how he did it, but we know the BID later issued a press release saying it has stopped using the forms with the President’s image.

This is not true. Last week, the flight attendants of Thai Airways were still using the BID arrival cards in question: call that lying and disobedience.

Then last week, news came out about the so-called ‘Dra. Belo cards’.

The BID apparently had not learned its lesson, or was so hard-headed, that it printed millions of departure and arrival cards with the image of a doctor whose sole claim to fame is to have trimmed the waistlines, firmed up the flat noses and sagging breasts, and removed flab of fats of the moneyed famous and infamous, including celluloid stars.

Tasteless. That is, the choice of ‘endorser’ of the BID.

I said this not because I prefer the image of my labrador, Zorro, to be on the arrival and departure cards, but because if the reports are correct, the mangling by the BID of the use of the abbreviation ‘Dr.’ as “Dra.’ is inexcusable.

In correct English usage, there is no abbreviation as ‘Dra.’! The title, ‘doctor’, refers both to a male and female physician and its abbreviation is simply ‘Dr.’, with a period or full stop (.) in American usage, and without a period or full stop, if you go by British usage. Here, I’ll stop my lecture on punctuation . . .

. . . and continue excoriating the BID for its more serious offense—its defiance.

The BID claimed it was not responsible for the printing of the cards with the ‘Dra. Belo’ image. It reasoned it was its contractor, e.Xtend Inc., which was at fault.

Fine. Charles Stephen Sy of e.Extend apparently told GMANews.TV that there was no need to get the approval of the BID in printing the advertisement of the Belo Medical Group on the arrival and departure cards and that there was nothing ‘immoral’ with the cards. No one, really, said it was, as far as I recall.

"e.Xtend has the right to place any sponsors and advertisements as long as they are not contrary to the public morals or standards or compromise the image of the Bureau of Immigration," Sy was quoted to have said.

Well, Mr. Sy, I’ll tell you this: what you did already compromised the BID with the President. What you did had already put the BID in the list of government agencies that disobeys the P-Noy, and we, P-Noy’s ‘boss’, are watching.

Now, from the ‘boss’: Mr. President, sack Ronald Ledesma, the BID’s officer-in-charge, for causing you—and us—another unwanted migraine. We don’t deserve it.