Bureau of Immigration (BI) officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) barred from entering the country on Thursday an American previously convicted of sex crimes in the US.
Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco 39-year-old Thomas Henry Vander Waal was intercepted at the NAIA Terminal 1 upon his arrival aboard a China Eastern Airlines flight from Taipei, Taiwan. Tansingco said the American was immediately issued an exclusion order after the officer who processed his arrival saw that his name was in the BI’s alert list of registered sex offenders (RSO).
“Our immigration law expressly forbids entry of aliens who have been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude because they are an undesirable aliens,” the BI chief stressed. According to the Interpol’s national central bureau in Manila, Vander Waal, who hails from Rock Valley, Sioux County, Iowa, has convictions related to sex offenses against minors in the US.
His convictions allegedly involved criminal offenses, including child pornography, sexual abuse, and molesting a child under 15 years of age. Tansingco bared that he already issued an order directing the inclusion of the American in the BI’s blacklist of unwanted aliens. “This effectively bans him from re-entering the Philippines so that he won’t pose a threat and risk to our women and children,” he added.
