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THINKING PINOY
By RJ NIETO
RJ Nieto
The story about the supposed entry ban on Senator De Lima’s supposed persecutors is, for the lack of a better term, more f*cked up than you think it is.
Over the past week, each major Philippine news outlet ran a story on the supposed amendment to the United States Fiscal Year 2020 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill that includes a prohibition on entry to United States soil of “foreign government officials about whom the Secretary has credible information have been involved in the wrongful imprisonment” of Senator Leila De Lima.
As expected, the Liberal Party and its supporters eagerly vocalized their abject happiness over the supposed development, while many administration members and their allies denounced it.
But here’s the problem: all of the jubilation and condemnation was for nothing.
Why? Because the said provision is NOWHERE to be found in the final version that was signed by US President Donald Trump on 20 December 2019.
The US FY 2020 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill started as the following proposed measures:
- H.R. 2740: Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Defense, State, Foreign Operations, and Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, 2020.
- H.R. 2839: Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2020.
- S. 2583: Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2020.
None of these three proposals became stand-alone laws as parts of them were incorporated in the 2020 US National Budget Bill, more formally known as “HR 1865: Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020.”
An official copy (called an “enrolled bill”) of the final version of H.R. 1865, which Trump signed on December 20th, can be found in the official website of the United States Congress.
Despite multiple news reports attesting to the existence of such an entry ban, the entire bill did not mention the character strings “De Lima,” “wrongful,” “imprisonment,” i.e., no provision in the signed HR 1865 contains the text as described in the various Philippine news reports published over the past week.
The nearest thing related to the De Lima issue that can be found in the final text is in Section 7031(c)(1)(A), which reads:
“Officials of foreign governments and their immediate family members about whom the Secretary of State has credible information have been involved in significant corruption, including corruption related to the extraction of natural resources, or a gross violation of human rights shall be ineligible for entry into the United States.”
This sounds quite similar to what the news reports indicated. This exact clause, however, is also present in the US Consolidated Appropriations Acts of 2015[2], 2016[3], 2017[4], and 2018[5].
If that exact clause was present in previous budgets anyway, then what amendment were Senators Leahy and Durbin, along with the rest of the 3% of the Philippines, raving about?
Global Magnitsky Act
This entire hullabaloo traces its roots to US Public Law 112–208, the “Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012,” which targeted mainly Russian government officials.
This law was expanded in 2016 and was informally called the “Global Magnitsky Act of 2016” and the first implementation is in President Trump’s 2016 Executive Order No. 13818, which banned entry to a former Gambian president, a Nicaraguan official, and several others.
As shown above, the clause on entry bans is the standard text in US Budget Laws since 2015 at the latest. In the absence of any provision that specifically pertains to the detained Senator De Lima, along with the lack of any new Trump executive order similar to the one in 2016, it logically follows that no such ban as reported over the past week exists.
I didn’t find these out until now because I have been busy in Japan since December 20th. But what I find more shocking is that some news agencies even bothered to include my friend Sass Sasot and I, Rey Joseph Nieto, in the supposed targets of the fictional amendment, on three grounds:
First, the supposed amendment is fake news published by supposedly reputable news outlets.
Second, the Global Magnitsky clause in the annual US Budget Laws has been there since 2015.
Third, I have traveled to the United States multiple times since 2014, with two visits in April and July of 2019.
But more importantly, whatever happened to the hordes of lawyers in Malacanang who seem to have forgotten to check the actual text of the 2020 US Budget before advising the Palace to comment on the issue?
And even more importantly, whatever happened to the supposedly legitimate journalists who failed to do the same?
As a side note, let me thank GMA News for taking the effort to get my side of the story, but still…
Dear Philippine Mainstream Media, please don’t interrupt my peaceful vacation with your fake news.
Thank you.
For comments and reactions, email tp@thinkingpinoy.net
https://news.mb.com.ph/2019/12/28/sen-de-lima-official-docs-show-us-entry-ban-is-as-fake-as-fake-news-gets/
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