Where Do You Actually File a SIRV in the Philippines, and What Does Immigration Ask For?

Two agencies, one fixed order: BOI first, Immigration second

A Special Investor's Resident Visa is not filed at a single counter. The Board of Investments (BOI, under the Department of Trade and Industry) decides whether your investment qualifies and issues an endorsement letter. The Bureau of Immigration then receives the case, runs its checks, prepares the order and implements the visa in your passport. The order cannot be reversed, and the second leg cannot start without the first.

The receiving office on the immigration side is named explicitly in the Bureau's 2026 Citizen's Charter: the Makati Immigration Extension Office. It is not the main office in Intramuros. This trips up a lot of first-time applicants, who assume that anything visa-related happens at the main building, spend a morning travelling there, and come away thinking their documents were wrong when the problem was the address.

The Charter classifies this transaction as Highly Technical — the most demanding classification it uses — and tags it as both G2B (government to business) and G2C (government to citizen). Sitting directly under the eligibility paragraph is a one-line note that explains the whole structure: Application must be endorsed by the Board of Investments. Immigration accepts the BOI's judgement about your investment; it does not re-open that question itself.

So the honest answer to "where do I file?" is: two places, two sets of documents, two clocks. At the BOI you are producing evidence about money and about the business you put it into. At Immigration you are producing evidence about identity and clean record. Confusing the two is the single most common reason people arrive at a counter with a folder full of documents nobody there is asking for.

How long each leg takes and which cost buckets exist is a separate question, covered in how long a SIRV takes and where the money goes. And one clarification before anything else: the SIRV is not the SRRV. The SRRV sits with the Philippine Retirement Authority, an entirely different agency, and its conditions and tiers are whatever the PRA currently publishes. If you are still deciding between them, start at SIRV compared with the SRRV.

What the BOI leg is really testing: the investment, not your paperwork

The BOI is answering one question: did foreign capital genuinely come into the country, and was it placed into an activity the law recognises? Nothing about passport photos or application forms. Once you see the leg that way, it becomes obvious where your preparation effort should go.

The Charter's eligibility paragraph states that the applicant is a foreign investor with inward remittance who invests the subject capital in viable economic activities pursuant to Book V of the Omnibus Investments Code (Executive Order No. 226, as amended). That single sentence contains two independent gates. One is a minimum amount of remitted capital. The other is a list of activities the investment may go into. The Charter confirms that both a capital floor and a qualifying scope exist; the actual figure and the current list of qualifying activities are whatever the BOI publishes at the time you apply, so do not plan against a number you found in an old forum post.

The word inward does more work than most applicants expect. The capital has to arrive from outside the country through a traceable banking route. Money shuffled between accounts already inside the Philippines generally will not satisfy this, however large the number looks on a statement. In practice that means you need a clean chain: where the funds originated, which bank they moved through, under what purpose they were remitted, and which investment vehicle finally received them. If any link in that chain is missing, it is very hard to reconstruct after the fact.

Where the money goes matters just as much. Not every business qualifies. Which forms of investment are acceptable, and what obligations you carry for as long as you hold the visa — annual reporting, notifying changes — belong to the pillar article: Philippine investor immigration: conditions and qualifying investments. What happens if you later divest, reduce your stake or change projects is covered in what divesting does to your SIRV status.

What you carry out of this leg is one document: an original Endorsement Letter. It is not a visa. It is the ticket that lets the immigration leg begin. Until you hold it, there is nothing useful to ask Immigration.

Immigration's checklist has exactly three items — here is why

The standard checklist on the immigration side is three lines long: the original BOI endorsement letter, your original valid passport, and your National ID card number. No medical certificate, no bank statements, no articles of incorporation — because all of that was already examined one leg earlier.

As printed in the Charter, the three items are:

1. Endorsement Letter from the Board of Investments — one original copy, secured from the Department of Trade and Industry, Board of Investment.
2. Valid passport — one original copy, supplied by the applicant.
3. National ID Card Number, pursuant to Memorandum No. 2025-122 — one original plus one photocopy, supplied by the applicant.

Each has a failure mode worth knowing. The endorsement letter must be the original, and it must stay in good physical condition, because it gets stamped twice: a "No Derogatory Record Found" stamp on the front at step one, and a second stamp on the reverse side during internal processing. A scan or a photocopy cannot carry those stamps, so there is no point bringing one. Do not fold it across the area where a stamp would land.

The passport is run through a scanner to generate your payment slip and is later physically stamped with the approved visa, so both its data page and its remaining validity matter. A passport close to expiry, or one with a damaged data page, will stall you at two separate steps.

The National ID number requirement is recent — it comes from a 2025 memorandum, which is why guides written even a couple of years ago do not mention it at all. If your registration status is unclear or the number has not been issued yet, ask the receiving office how they are currently treating it rather than substituting some other government ID on your own initiative.

The important takeaway is this: a short checklist is not a low bar. These three documents only let Immigration confirm two things — that the BOI has endorsed the case, and that you carry no derogatory record. Every judgement that can actually stop you happened before you walked in. Treating a Highly Technical transaction as simple because the list is short is how people lose a filing window.

One practical note: several immigration transactions require documents to be arranged in checklist order and securely fastened in a folder before submission. The SIRV entry itself lists only the three items and specifies no folder format, so follow whatever the receiving counter currently asks. Bringing originals plus photocopies is never wasted.

The nine-step route at the Makati Extension Office, and the two record checks

The Charter maps the immigration leg as nine client steps, with two separate derogatory record checks, and the long wait sits inside step five. Knowing the route tells you which counter to stand at and what should be in your hand.

1. Counter 7 — present the BOI endorsement letter and passport for derogatory record checking; on clearance, a "No Derogatory Record Found" stamp goes onto the endorsement letter.
2. Counter 9 — submit the endorsement letter and passport for assessment; the passport is scanned to generate the Order of Payment Slip (OPS).
3. Counter 5 (cashier) — pay against the OPS and secure the Official Receipt (OR).
4. Counter 8 — submit the endorsement letter together with the documentary requirements and the OR; staff encode the case into the BI-Makati Monitoring System.
5. Internal processing, with you not present — a second derogatory record check, a "No Derogatory Record Found" stamp on the back of the endorsement letter, preparation of the visa order, review by the Acting Alien Control Officer, and transmission of the order to and from the Office of the Deputy Commissioner at the Main Office, which the Charter allots 4 working days.
6. Claiming the approved order — the Charter states this is to be done by the BOI liaison.
7. Transmitting the applicant's passport and the approved order — again, to be done by the BOI liaison.
8. Implementation — the Acting Alien Control Officer implements the approved SIRV in the passport.
9. Release — the passport is returned with the visa implemented, together with a copy of the approved visa order.

The Charter's Total Processing Time for this leg is 4 working days, 4 hours and 34 minutes. Read the boundary carefully: that figure covers the immigration leg only. It does not include the BOI leg, and it does not include your own document gathering, scheduling or travel. Using it as the total timeline for a SIRV guarantees disappointment. For the full accounting, see how long a SIRV takes and where the money goes.

The two record checks are the real risk on this route. Fail the first and you never reach a payment slip. Fail the second and the case stops inside internal processing. Anyone with a history of refusal, deportation or overstay should resolve that question before committing capital, not while standing at Counter 7.

Steps 6 and 7 are assigned to the BOI liaison — nobody can substitute for that

The Charter attaches the same parenthetical to step 6 and step 7: to be done by the BOI liaison. Claiming the approved order and transmitting the applicant's passport with that order are assigned to the Board of Investments' liaison personnel. This is the hardest boundary anywhere in the process, and it is not about queue-jumping — it defines which agency's staff move the file along that channel.

The logic follows from everything above. Immigration relies on the BOI's endorsement, so the approved order returns through the same channel that produced the endorsement. For an applicant, that has three concrete consequences.

• Do not pay for a claim that somebody's staff will personally collect the approved order from the counter. The Charter assigns that role to the BOI liaison. A private company cannot appoint itself into it.
• Your passport passes through that channel. Agree in advance when it leaves your hands, when it comes back, and keep a written handover record. A passport sitting somewhere else for days is a risk you should be actively managing, not discovering later.
• This wait does not respond to pressure. Step five alone allots 4 working days for the order to travel to and from the Deputy Commissioner's office, and steps 6 and 7 run on the BOI's own rhythm. Nobody compresses that.

Which raises the obvious follow-up: what can an agent legitimately do for you, and what can no one do? That deserves its own treatment — see what a SIRV agent can and cannot do for you. For now, one test you can apply immediately: when somebody walks you through this process and describes steps 6 and 7 as something they "handle directly", ask them to name the specific action they mean. A clear answer is informative either way.

Capital ready to move, but still unsure what evidence the BOI leg will want? Getting the remittance trail and the investment vehicle right first is far cheaper than fixing them later. Have an advisor review your plan →

A seven-point check before you travel to the counter

Run these seven checks in this order and you will avoid almost every wasted trip.

1. Confirm you are holding the original BOI endorsement letter. Not a filing receipt, not a PDF in an email — the signed original. Without it the remaining six points are moot.
2. Confirm you are going to the Makati Immigration Extension Office, not the main office. The Charter names the receiving office explicitly.
3. Do not expect a provincial window. This transaction is received at national level. Immigration field offices in Cebu, Davao or Clark handle other transactions. When you see a claim about a "new provincial investor visa policy", verify before buying a ticket.
4. Passport: enough remaining validity, clean scannable data page. It goes through a scanner at step two and gets stamped at step eight. A near-expiry or damaged passport stalls both.
5. National ID number ready, original plus photocopy, per Memorandum No. 2025-122. This item did not exist in older guides. If your status is uncertain, ask before you go rather than improvising with another ID.
6. Decide who files and in what capacity. Filing in person, through an authorised representative, or via the BOI liaison channel each implies different supporting paperwork. Remember that steps 6 and 7 are already assigned to the BOI liaison — that is a separate question from who accompanies you to the counter.
7. Dependants are separate cases. A spouse or minor child is not a name added to your file. For the current treatment, see investor immigration conditions and holder obligations.

Two closing points that are not flattering but are true. First, this route punishes the "invest now, sort out the visa later" instinct: the BOI's judgement comes first, and capital placed into a non-qualifying activity leaves the rest of the process with nothing to attach to. Second, implementation is not the finish line — holding the visa carries continuing annual obligations and reporting duties. If you want the plan, the remittance trail and the filing sequence lined up in one pass before you commit, start with a visa and workforce advisor.

This article is compiled from publicly published entries of the Bureau of Immigration's 2026 Citizen's Charter and is intended to explain how the process is structured. Actual requirements, timelines and receiving arrangements follow whatever the BOI and the Bureau of Immigration currently publish. Yixing is a private consultancy with no affiliation to any government agency and makes no representation on behalf of any authority. For individual disputes consult a licensed attorney; this article is not legal advice.