Starting Friday, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) will fully implement the use of the new machine-readable arrival and departure (A/D) cards for all international passengers arriving and departing at all the international ports in the country.

The new A/D cards, which was initially launched last May 2009, was shelved temporarily after the Airline Operators Council (AOC) complained to the BI that they still had in their possession millions of copies of the old embarkation and disembarkation cards.

The AOC requested a six-month moratorium from the BI office giving them enough time to dispose of their old cards.

Immigration Commissioner Nonoy Libanan granted the request and gave the AOC until Friday, Dec. 31, 2009 to use the old cards.

According to Libanan, the old immigration cards cannot be used after Dec. 31 because all major international ports around the country have been fully computerized—which can only process the ‘machine-readable’ A/D cards.

Libanan explained that the new immigration card has all the vital information on passengers’ demographics that are collated and stored in their computer database. Libanan added that all the information they will collect can be an important tool for the tourism industry, including airline companies, travel agencies and tour operators.

With the new A/D card, the BI aims to have an accurate, timely, efficient, modern, progressive, and uniform means of recording and retrieval of the arrival and departure record of passengers.

Libanan said the new card would help the BI exercise its law enforcement functions, particularly in tracing the entry and departure of people suspected of involvement in terrorism, human trafficking, drugs and arms smuggling, and other transnational crimes as well as those afflicted with contagious diseases.

It was learned that the BI has printed at least three months worth of the machine-readable A/D cards that have been distributed to all the airline companies operating in the country a month before its implementation.