A visa consultancy firm operating in downtown Legazpi City has been ordered shut by the Department of Migrant Workers after regulators said it was placing Filipinos in overseas jobs without the license required to do so.
The agency enforced Closure Order No. 25, Series of 2026, against Cander Visa Consultancy Services, Inc. on Wednesday, sealing the company’s office on Imperial Street along Alternate Road in Barangay 17-Ilawod. The action was reported by 91.5 Brigada News FM Legazpi City.
Jerome Alcantara, DMW Assistant Secretary for Adjudication Services and Regional Operations, said the shutdown followed weeks of monitoring and an entrapment operation that pointed to recruitment activity being conducted at the site. Firms offering placement for jobs abroad must hold a license from the DMW; conducting such transactions without one falls under illegal recruitment, which carries prison terms of 12 to 20 years under Philippine law.
The enforcement team drew personnel from both the national and regional levels of the department, working alongside local authorities. DMW Bicol Regional Director Atty. Jeena P. Paclibar-Laceda took part in the operation, joined by representatives from the DMW Central Office and Regional Office, officials of Barangay 17-Ilawod, personnel from the Legazpi City Police, staff from the city’s Business Permits and Licensing Office, and members of the press.
The Legazpi closure adds to a run of similar operations mounted by the DMW’s Migrant Workers Protection Bureau across the country this year, part of a broader campaign against firms that market themselves as visa or consultancy services while quietly steering applicants toward overseas employment. In several recent cases, companies shut down under the same authority were found to have collected substantial processing or placement fees from applicants who were promised work abroad.
Establishments closed for these violations are typically entered into the department’s roster of persons and entities barred from taking part in the government’s overseas recruitment program, cutting them off from any future role in labor deployment.
