I have two children in the Philippines but I am not married to the mother. Can I enter?

Yes you are allowed to enter the Philippines under current rules because of your two children, however you have to obtain a 9A tourist visa in advance and you are going to need to get copies of the kids birth certificates from the PSA Site Maintenance (psaserbilis.com.ph) they are offline at the moment sadly.

I am in exactly the same position as you and I am trying to decide if it is going to be feasible to visit my kids for Christmas, I need the fresh copies of the birth certificates because I will need to prove to the London Philippine Embassy that I have a valid reason to obtain a 9A visa, however my problem is the UK Quarantine Hotel fee on the way back as it is way over 2000 quid now I think something like £2300 for 10 days and I am not sure I really want to afford that as the money would be better saved to pay for the kids school next year as if do spend that at Christmas I will be financially strained next July when I need to pay for the kids school again.

But rest assured that under the current restrictions as the parent of Filipino children you are entitled to visit.

Entry requirements - Philippines travel advice - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) this is the link for the extract below.

The second yellow block marked below is the reason we get in but like everything in the Philippines it's more complex and we need that 9A to avoid having to get the exemption document Entry Exemption Requests Online Verification (dfa.gov.ph)

The problem is that to get the 9A visa we still need to prove that we are parents of Filipino children, marriage is not a pre-requisite.



edit: also please note that they only see vaccination in the Philippines as valid so our vaccinations over here are completely ignored so we require 14 day quarantine on arrival in the Philippines I reckon about £400 for a 10 day quarantine hotel in Manila.