PROMOTERS and recruiters of entertainers are blaming Japanese immigration laws for forcing the hands of an increasing number of Filipino women to grab illegal ways to enter or stay in that country. Constricted labor processing to Japan has displaced Filipino entertainers who, according to their promoters and recruiters, are engaging in illegal activities to ensure they can still work in that country.

“Arranged or fixed marriages are rampant now. While still in Japan, they (overseas performing artists), they pay huge sums of money to their prospective husband to marry them in the Philippines so that they can go back there to work,” said Cristy Gatchialian, vice president of the Confederated Association of Licensed Entertainment Agencies (CALEA).

THEY failed, they warbled, and they minced through skits brick-heavy with slogans, lessons, and meaning. They were amateurish, yet they elicited tears from a sophisticated audience composed of embassy officials and legislators, journalists, and NGO officers.

They were former migrant women from Japan and their Japanese-Filipino children (JFC). They make up Teatro Akebono and they exist to fight for the legitimacy of JFCs and other concerns.

SOME overseas Filipino workers may resemble Johnny Depp, but unlike the esteemed “pirate of the Caribbean,” they are regarded as “unwitting” couriers of bootleg videos to and from the Philippines, experts discussed with the OFW Journalism Consortium.

An official of Association of Video Distributors of the Philippines (AvidPhil) said the government should look into this matter. AvidPhil, a national trade association promoting the video industry, made the call after the United States Trade Representative (USTR) removed the Philippines from the priority list of governments that American firms accuse of allowing intellectual property theft.

QUEZON CITY — WHAT’S blue and nearing obsolescence but still worth reading?

It’s the book entitled “Overseas Absentee Voting: The Philippine Experience,” whose author is preventing the issue from dying amid renewed efforts to change the country’s constitution.

Not that author and lawyer Henry Rojas is bothered over potential revenue loss from his book’s sale—at P250 or just under US$5 each from publisher and nonprofit group Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA)-Philippines; Rojas is afraid overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) may again miss out on the deal.