Which Office Handles SIRV? Two Agencies, Two Locations

Ask which agency first, then ask for the address

The structure guarantees more than one address: substantive judgement and visa implementation sit in different agencies. Ask the wrong one and no address helps.

The investment stage is with the Board of Investments. It decides whether the investment qualifies and whether the inward capital holds up, and issues the Endorsement Letter. What you bring there is evidence of the investment and the funds.

The visa stage is with the Bureau of Immigration, which receives, reviews, drafts the order and implements the visa in the passport. The 2026 Citizen’s Charter states under “Who may avail” that the application must be endorsed by the Board, and names the receiving unit as the Makati Immigration Extension Office. Immigration does not re-examine whether the investment qualifies, so bringing a folder of investment documents to that counter is asking in the wrong building.

The right question is therefore not “what is the address” but “which agency owns the step I am on, and where is that agency currently located”. See which agency handles which segment.

The commonest wasted trip: going to the main office

“Visas are done at the main immigration office” is an expensive default. Published entries name the receiving unit as the Makati extension office, while the main office is in Intramuros, Manila. Two different places.

Why so specific? Because the transaction is classified Highly Technical, the top difficulty band, and two steps of the route are expressly performed by the Board of Investments liaison. That is a fixed channel between agencies, attached to a particular office rather than available at any counter.

The cost is not only the day. People who return from a wasted trip often conclude that their documents were at fault and start assembling things they do not need, pointing the whole matter in the wrong direction. Confirming the receiving unit before you leave matters more than confirming the documents. The counter-by-counter route is in the nine-step route.

Confirming the receiving unit and current arrangements beforehand saves a whole day on the ground. Ask a consultant to verify against current rules →

Provincial windows: do not assume, verify

This transaction is received at national level; immigration offices in Cebu, Davao or Clark handle other things. Claims that “there is a new provincial policy and you can file locally” should be treated as a warning light — ask for the source and the date.

Immigration has many field offices and sub-ports nationwide, but what each may receive differs: some receive and process fully, some only receive documents and payment while the decision is made elsewhere, and some do not handle a given item at all. Those distinctions are marked item by item in the official directory of transactions, not guessed from experience.

So do not treat “there is an immigration office near me” as “this can be done near me”. Verify using the method in the next section rather than flying first and asking later.

Verify before you travel: four steps anyone can take

We do not copy a street number here because locations, floors, windows and opening hours all change, and an expired address in an article is worse than no address at all. Walk these four steps and you get the current answer.

One: work out which agency owns your current step. No original endorsement letter yet means the Board of Investments; endorsement in hand means the Immigration receiving office.

Two: go to that agency’s own website for its office directory. On the Immigration side, start from the Bureau of Immigration directory page, which carries the nationwide directory of offices and transactions. On the Board side, use the office locations and contact details published on its official site. Trust official domains only, not whichever third-party page ranks highest.

Three: verify three things, and do not travel without all of them — the name of the office that receives this transaction, its currently published location, and contact details. Where a phone number or official email exists, confirm on the day whether the transaction is being received and whether appointments or slots apply.

Four: record when you checked. Write down the date and the page. It sounds fussy, but when the situation on the ground differs from what you read, it decides whether you are looking at stale information or standing in the wrong place.

And a general rule: anyone who gives you an address but cannot name the source and the date is giving you a reference, not a basis — including social media, forums and old guides.

Verify the receiving unit and current arrangements, then check document form, and the trip is worth making. Ask a consultant to verify against current rules →

On arrival: what to have in hand

Reaching the right building is only the first gate; the wrong form of document sends you back just as surely. Three form requirements are hard.

The endorsement must be the original. It is stamped twice on the route — on the face after the record check, on the reverse during internal processing. Copies and scans cannot carry those stamps, and folding across the stamping area causes trouble.

The passport must scan cleanly, because it is scanned to generate the payment slip. Keep the data page legible and the remaining validity ample.

Identity number requirements follow the current version. The National ID Card Number requirement comes from Memorandum No. 2025-122 and is absent from older guides; ask in advance where its status is uncertain rather than substituting another document.

One more easily missed item: decide who files. Whether you attend personally, send an authorised representative, or the matter moves through the inter-agency liaison channel determines whether additional authorisation documents are needed. The two steps published as performed by the Board’s liaison are not a queue-sitting role a private firm substitutes for; if anyone describes them as “we handle it directly”, ask which specific action is meant. The full self-check is in the ten most-skipped items.

To confirm which agency your trip is for and what form your documents must take, talk to the Yixing visa and HR team. Yixing is a Chinese-language consultancy registered in Makati, Philippines, holding SEC registration CS202009551 and Bureau of Immigration accreditation CA-202624381-1. We are not affiliated with any government agency and make no representation about approval outcomes; consult a licensed attorney on your own matter. This article draws on published items such as the 2026 Bureau of Immigration Citizen’s Charter. Qualifying investment forms, thresholds and current acceptance status follow whatever the Board of Investments and the Bureau of Immigration publish at the time; no figures are given here.