My AEP Expired but My 9G Is Still Valid — Am I Legal? Short Answer: the Visa Holds, the Work Does Not

The Visa Holds. The Right to Work Does Not.

Split the question into three and it resolves cleanly.

1. Does the 9G lapse because the AEP did? No. No provision anywhere states that an expired AEP revokes a 9G. The reverse, however, is written down: Joint Memorandum Circular No. 001, series of 2019, provides at Section 4 that where a work visa application is denied or the visa is cancelled, BI shall immediately inform DOLE, and the AEP issued by DOLE will be revoked or cancelled automatically upon receipt of that notification. The rule runs one way: lose the visa and the permit follows; lose the permit and the visa does not automatically follow.
2. So can I keep working? No, and this is the substance of it. The AEP is an employment permit issued by DOLE under Article 40 of the Labor Code. The 9G is a residence visa issued by BI under Section 9(g) of the Philippine Immigration Act of 1940. Two independent authorisations covering two different things; neither substitutes for the other. The visa answers whether you may be here. The permit answers whether you may be paid to work here.
3. Where is the actual risk? In the DOLE penalty regime and in BI enforcement. In March 2026 the Bureau arrested a Chinese national in Cebu who held a valid working visa, petitioned by a Makati-based company for the position of marketing consultant — but BI's verification with DOLE Region 7 confirmed that he did not possess a valid Alien Employment Permit. He was taken into custody and into deportation proceedings. That is what "visa valid, permit dead" looks like in practice.

So the correct framing is not "nothing has happened yet." It is "I am already non-compliant and have not yet been caught." And as the next sections show, the probability of being caught is higher than most people assume, because the two agencies have been exchanging data monthly for years.

For what each permit is and which comes first, see the Alien Employment Permit explained and AEP or 9G, which one first.

Eligibility, documents and the step-by-step process for the 9G are collected on Yixing’s Philippines 9G work visa page.

Why the Two Dates Drift Apart by Design

Most HR teams treat this as their own oversight. In fact the two timelines are structurally misaligned, and staying aligned takes deliberate effort.

First, the term rules differ. DOLE Department Order No. 248, series of 2025 — the New Rules and Regulations on the Employment of Foreign Nationals in the Philippines, effective 10 February 2025 — provides at Rule II Section 9: "the AEP shall be valid for a period of one year, unless a shorter or longer period is specified based on the duration of the employment or activity as stated in the employment contract or other modes of engagement. In no case shall the period of validity of an AEP exceed three (3) years." The operative word is that one year is the default. The 9G term, by contrast, is set by BI against company standing, contract term and other factors, and in practice runs one to three years. A contract with no explicit end date drops the AEP back to its one-year default while the visa may still have been granted for two — and the drift begins. How the visa term is decided is covered in how many years a 9G is granted for.

Second, they bind to different things. The AEP binds to the combination of person, position and employer, so a change of role or employer generally means a fresh application. The 9G binds employer and applicant. An internal transfer can therefore trigger a new AEP without triggering a new visa, permanently separating the two dates.

Third, the filing windows differ. D.O. 248-25, Rule III Section 2: "The application for renewal of an AEP may be filed within sixty (60) calendar days prior to its expiration." That is a two-month window. The 9G renewal rhythm is driven by BI's approval cycle and usually has to start earlier. Different lead times, often different owners — alignment does not happen by itself.

Fourth, the filing office changed in June 2026. Per DOLE's published announcements, AEP processing has been fully centralised at the DOLE central office through the Bureau of Local Employment, with regional offices no longer accepting filings; the instruments are Administrative Order No. 199, series of 2026, and Department Order No. 248-B, series of 2026. The practical effect for HR: institutional memory about "filing at the regional office covering the workplace" is now out of date. (The text of D.O. 248-B is at present chiefly available through DOLE press releases and international advisory firms' compliance alerts; confirm against current DOLE issuances before filing.)

Conclusion: do not expect to "renew the AEP while you are doing the 9G anyway." Different rules, different windows, different offices. They need separate reminders.

Three Scenarios: AEP Only, Visa Only, or Both

The remedy is determined entirely by this table. Locate yourself first.

Scenario A is the one that gets left alone longest, precisely because the passport looks fine. No monthly fine ticking up, no window chasing you, nothing a bank or a landlord would notice. The two things that surface it are the next 9G renewal filing, and an inspection.

A 9G granted for two years, an AEP issued for one, and HR tracking both against the same reminder — we see this in Chinese-invested companies roughly once a month. Have an advisor put both dates for every expat on one sheet →

"But My Visa Is Still Valid" Is Not a Defence

The question employees ask most is how they can be in breach when the visa has not expired. Here are the sources.

Layer one: the regulations name working on an expired AEP as a prohibited act. D.O. 221-21 stated it most explicitly at Section 23, listing among prohibited acts of employers and foreign nationals:

• "Entering into an employment contract with an invalid and/or expired AEP";
• "Employing/hiring foreign nationals without a valid AEP; or possessing fraudulent or expired AEP".

The current D.O. 248-25 carries the same effect through a general clause — Rule VII Section 1(c) lists "deliberate or willful disregard or non-compliance with any of the provisions of these Rules" as a prohibited act, and those Rules require the employer to obtain the AEP before actual engagement begins.

Layer two: separate legal bases, no substitution. The AEP rests on Article 40 of the Labor Code (Presidential Decree No. 442) — an employer desiring to employ a foreign national must first obtain an employment permit from DOLE. The 9G rests on Section 9(g) of the Philippine Immigration Act of 1940. Immigration granting you residence is not labour granting you the right to be employed. No provision makes one cover the other.

Layer three: the immigration statute has its own hook. Section 37(a)(7) of Commonwealth Act No. 613 provides for the deportation of "an alien who remains in the Philippines in violation of any limitation or condition under which he was admitted as a nonimmigrant." A 9G is issued for pre-arranged employment — so continuing to work in that status with no valid permit falls within the provision's reach. That is why the Cebu case ended in an arrest by immigration officers rather than a labour fine alone.

Layer four: this is not theoretical. Beyond the March 2026 Cebu arrests, BI arrested an American BPO executive in Cagayan de Oro in October 2025 on illegal employment grounds. "Valid work visa, no valid AEP" is a fact pattern that has actually been enforced.

If an inspection has already arrived, see what to do during a BI inspection.

The Penalty Was Rewritten in 2025: From Per Year to Per Act

This is the densest section here. The "PHP 10,000 per year" figure circulating online comes from superseded rules. The current computation works differently, and a 2026 DOLE ruling stretched that difference by a factor of nearly five hundred.

So what counts as one prohibited act? A DOLE ruling published in August 2026 supplies the working answer. In that case a foreign coach had not obtained the required Certificate of Exemption for his engagement at a university. DOLE held that this constituted continuing non-compliance, with each day treated as a separate prohibited act: from 10 February 2025 (the effectivity date of D.O. 248-25) to his resignation on 15 June 2026 — 490 days — assessed at PHP 10,000 per day, for PHP 4.9 million.

Three further details in the same ruling, each worth an HR note of its own:

• The employer is solidarily liable. The decision states the individual and the university are jointly and solidarily liable for the PHP 4.9 million. Not half each — either party can be pursued for the whole.
• The case was referred onward. The decision records referral to the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation for summary deportation proceedings. The labour fine is not the end of the matter; it is the start of the immigration one.
• Both computations appear side by side. The same ruling covered an earlier violation period in 2015–2016 under the then-applicable rules, for which the fine was PHP 10,000. Same person, same category of breach — the difference is entirely which rules were in force.

One official inconsistency you should know about: DOLE's 2026 AEP FAQ document still states the fine as PHP 10,000 "per year or fraction thereof" and asserts that D.O. 248 maintains and reiterates it. That does not match the text of D.O. 248-25, which contains no "per year" language. The same FAQ also describes an indefinite bar for fraudulent permits, where the Rules provide a five-year and a ten-year bar. Where official documents conflict, assess risk against the stricter reading, argue formal proceedings from the text of the Department Order itself, and take Philippine counsel.

Two consequences that get overlooked (D.O. 248-25, Rule VII Section 2): prohibited acts involving misrepresentation, false statement, tampering or fraud carry a five-year bar on applying for an AEP; those falling under the revocation grounds and under "deliberate or willful disregard or non-compliance with any of the provisions of these Rules" carry a ten-year bar. Note which category continuing to work on an expired permit most plausibly falls into.

A budget built on the old ten-thousand-a-year figure and an exposure computed per day are an order of magnitude apart — and most agent quotations still use the old number. Have an advisor recompute the exposure against the current Department Order →

Will Immigration Find Out? They Already Receive the Data Monthly

"DOLE knows, but immigration does not" stopped being true in 2019, and comprehensively so in 2024.

Layer one: monthly reporting is institutional. Joint Guidelines No. 01, series of 2019, issued by DOLE, the DOJ, BI and the BIR, provides at Section 10 that DOLE shall submit monthly reports of all AEP applications received by or pending before it to the BI Legal Department, indicating the name of the foreign national and the employer, the date of application, the action taken, and where applicable the validity of the AEP. BI reciprocates monthly on SWPs, PWPs and 9(g) visas.

Layer two: there is a standing joint inspection team. Joint Memorandum Circular No. 001, series of 2019, Section 9: "A special joint inspection team shall be created to be composed of the DOLE, BI, and BIR to conduct joint inspection of establishments employing FNs to ensure their compliance with the labor, immigration and tax laws." Three agencies, one visit, three sets of records.

Layer three: a 2024 data-sharing agreement. BI's February 2024 announcement records that DOLE will supply BI with comprehensive data on AEPs, certificates of exemption and exclusion, as well as information on cancelled and revoked AEPs, and that this will serve as a resource for BI in verifying the information submitted by applicants seeking conversion to or extension of their 9(g) working visas.

Stack those and the practical meaning is blunt:

• BI already holds your AEP validity date. It does not depend on your disclosure.
• Your next 9G renewal filing is an automatic cross-check. The 2024 agreement says so in terms.
• One inspection surfaces all three lines at once. That is what the joint team is for.
• The Cebu case shows the mechanics: BI verified with DOLE Region 7 to establish that no valid AEP existed. Cross-agency verification is routine practice, not an escalation.

Which makes "we will fix it at the next renewal" the single worst plan available: the renewal is the moment the cross-check happens, and by then the non-compliance period has grown from months into more than a year.

Is the 9G Dragged Down? Not Revoked, but Deadlocked

Separate "will it be revoked" from "will anything still work," and the answer becomes precise.

Not revoked automatically. No provision states that an expired AEP triggers revocation of a 9G. There is one adjacent provision that should not be over-read: Section 8 of the 2019 Joint Guidelines provides that a permit covered by those Guidelines whose continued validity depends on the issuance of a related permit shall be deemed cancelled or revoked upon denial, revocation or cancellation of that related permit. But the permits covered are the SWP, AEP and PWP, the only worked example given is the PWP, and the provision addresses denial, revocation and cancellation — natural expiry is not the same thing as revocation. Reading it as "expired AEP voids the 9G" goes beyond the text.

It does deadlock you, though, and at the worst point. The BI Citizen's Charter checklist for conversion to and extension of the 9G commercial visa lists at item seven: "Alien Employment Permit (AEP) issued by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) or Certificate of Exclusion or Exemption with validity (1 photocopy) with original receipt."

Those two words, "with validity," are the whole problem:

• An expired AEP means that requirement is not met, which means the 9G renewal cannot be filed. Not refused — not accepted for filing in the first place.
• And the filing itself carries a time floor: the same checklist requires the applicant's passport to show a valid authorised stay of at least thirty days at the time fees are assessed. So you cannot simply wait indefinitely for the AEP; the visa clock keeps running.
• Once the 9G also expires you fall from scenario A into scenario C, where status has to be stabilised first — usually by downgrading — and both cost and timeline step up. See downgrading before you leave the job or the country.

One thing employers get backwards: downgrading is something the individual applies for; BI does not do it for you. The Charter's downgrading entry requires a request letter to the Commissioner setting out the reason — resignation, termination, an overstayed extension, corporate dissolution — and prices it by whether and how long the visa has been expired. Nobody closes the file on your behalf, and the exposure persists while it stays open.

A usable operational rule: the real deadline is not the AEP expiry date. It is your 9G expiry date minus the time it takes to rebuild the AEP. Put that date in the calendar instead.

Does Work Have to Stop? What Each Side Must Do

The uncomfortable answer first: yes, permit-requiring work should stop until the permit is restored. The basis is in D.O. 248-25, Rule II Section 3: the application must be filed within fifteen calendar days of the signing of the employment contract or issuance of the appointment, and "the effectivity of the employment contract or appointment shall be conditioned on the issuance of an AEP by DOLE." The permit is a precondition of engagement, not a formality completed afterwards.

On the rebuild itself, three points:

1. After expiry it cannot proceed as a renewal. The renewal window is the sixty calendar days before expiry (Rule III Section 2), and it closes on the expiry date. Rule III Section 1 already requires renewals to follow "the same requirements and procedures as a new application," so in practice a lapsed permit means running the full sequence again: fresh publication, a fresh labour market test, full fees. The publication and labour market test segment is the least compressible part of the whole timeline. See foreign worker ratios and understudy requirements.
2. Fees step by year. D.O. 248-25 sets PHP 6,000 for one year, with PHP 5,000 for every additional year or fraction thereof. Note also that a renewal filing must attach a photocopy of the expiring AEP card, and the card itself is surrendered.
3. The filing office has changed. Per DOLE's 2026 announcements, AEP processing is now centralised at the central office. Going to the regional office on institutional memory may waste a trip.

The suspension period is where this most often turns into an employment dispute. Whether salary continues, whether statutory contributions continue, whether the arrangement amounts to constructive dismissal — none of these has a single right answer, and the fact that the company was responsible for the documentation weakens its position in any argument. Confirm with employment counsel before implementing; see the Philippine employment risk checklist.

One final branch that catches people: you may not need an AEP at all, but you still need a certificate. D.O. 248-25 Rule V sets out exemption (eight categories, including dependent spouses of diplomatic mission members, visiting and exchange professors under formal agreements, and permanent residents and holders of probationary or temporary resident visas) and exclusion (five categories, including board members with voting rights only who take no part in daily management, and intra-corporate transferees with at least one continuous year at the overseas parent). But remember: falling into an exempt or excluded category does not mean there is nothing to file — you must still apply to DOLE and actually obtain the Certificate of Exemption or Certificate of Exclusion. The PHP 4.9 million ruling described above penalised precisely the failure to obtain a Certificate of Exemption, not the absence of an AEP. "I am a director, I do not need one" is the standard opening line to this kind of assessment.

Preventing the Next One: Two Systems Changes and One Date Calculation

The root cause is almost always the same: tracking the AEP and the 9G as one item. The fix is cheap but has to be institutional.

Systems change one: split the two lines into two columns. Build one master table of foreign staff documentation in which AEP expiry and 9G expiry are separate columns, alongside ACR I-Card expiry and this year's annual report status. Keep it on a shared drive or in the HR system, not on one person's laptop. Note in passing that the BI Charter states 9G holders must perform the annual report within the first sixty days of every calendar year — that is a third independent timeline.

Systems change two: send reminders to at least two people — the employee and the HR owner. The employee has the strongest incentive to chase it and is routinely left off the distribution.

The date calculation: the real deadline is not the AEP expiry date. Work backwards from three markers:

1. 120 days out: start internal preparation. Check the contract's term clause, the position description and the corporate file. Because the AEP term is transmitted down from the contract, a contract with no stated end date lands you back on the one-year default. If you want two or three years, the decision point was signing day.
2. 60 days out: the renewal window opens (Rule III Section 2). Treat it as the start date, not the deadline. Publication and the labour market test take time.
3. The expiry date: the window closes. After that, renewal becomes a new application and the whole sequence restarts.

Three additional checkpoints:

• On any role or title change. The AEP binds person, position and employer, so a changed position can require a fresh permit. For employer changes, see changing employers on a 9G.
• On an employee's last day. Start the visa and permit wind-down that day; leaving it undone keeps the exposure with the company.
• If an AEP application is refused or opposed during publication. The deadlines are very short — see what to do when DOLE refuses an AEP.

The honest summary: the visa is still valid, and that validity is precisely what makes this dangerous, because it makes the whole situation look fine. What is actually accumulating is a period of non-compliance — under rules that now count per prohibited act, with a DOLE ruling that has treated each day as one, with solidary employer liability, and with referral onward to immigration. Stop the work and file in the week you discover it and the cost is usually contained. Let it run past the next 9G renewal and the order of magnitude changes.

Disclaimer: general information only, not legal or work-permit advice. All provisions, deadlines, fees and penalty standards follow current DOLE and BI rules and case-specific professional advice. Treat any promise of guaranteed approval or immunity from penalty as a warning sign. For how the two documents interlock overall, see the 9G work visa and AEP explained.