After you graduate
Rules read 19 Aug 2026
What Philippines's own immigration authority currently publishes. Not a ranking, not a guarantee, and not the same as what any agent or forum will tell you. Whether someone actually obtains residence depends on occupation, points, funds and policy that can change between application and graduation.
Route to citizenship
The Philippines' Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) hosts and administers, through its Special Committee on Naturalization (SCN, chaired by the Solicitor General with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and the National Security Adviser as members), the administrative naturalisation process under Republic Act No. 9139, 'The Administrative Naturalization Law of 2000.' The SCN's own documentary-requirements list includes a 'Native-Born Certificate of Residence (NBCR)' issued by the Bureau of Immigration — reflecting that RA 9139's administrative route is available specifically to a 'native-born alien' (someone born in the Philippines to alien parents who has resided there continuously since birth), not to a foreign national who entered the Philippines later in life, for example to study. The same requirements list does explicitly contemplate a petitioner who 'is a student' or 'a new graduate' without independent income (requiring an Affidavit of Financial Capacity or a supporting person's Affidavit of Support in that case) and requires, among many other items, a diploma and transcript from the petitioner's Philippine schooling, at least two Filipino character witnesses who have known the petitioner 10+ years, a government-hospital medical certificate, and clearances from the NBI, police, and courts. Total fees for a regular petitioner are stated as PHP 140,000 (application, filing/docketing, and oath-taking/naturalisation fees combined), plus mandatory newspaper-publication fees. Outside RA 9139's native-born-alien route, ordinary judicial naturalisation of any other foreign national is governed by Commonwealth Act No. 473 (the Revised Naturalization Law of 1939, as amended) through a petition in the Regional Trial Court rather than an administrative agency; this dataset could not locate that Act's text on an official Philippine government domain to cite its specific residence-length, language, and other criteria.
▸Show the source
New entry added 19 August 2026. Two Philippine government domains added to IMMIGRATION_DOMAINS in scripts/verify.mjs: immigration.gov.ph (Bureau of Immigration, under the Department of Justice — the visa authority) and osg.gov.ph (Office of the Solicitor General, which chairs and hosts the Special Committee on Naturalization). workDuringStudy, postStudyWork and residencyRoute are all left null: the Bureau of Immigration's own Student Visa (9F) page (immigration.gov.ph/student-visa-9f/) describes only the visa-conversion and extension procedure and fees, with no stated work entitlement; the Bureau instead lists a separate 'Special Study Permit', 'Provisional Work Permit', and 'Special Work Permit' as distinct application categories in its own site navigation, indicating that work rights are not bundled into the 9(F) student visa itself and instead require a separate permit this dataset did not research in further depth this pass. No distinct post-study job-search visa was found; the Bureau's Pre-arranged Employment Visa (9G) (immigration.gov.ph/pre-4-arranged-employment-visa-9g/) is the Philippines' ordinary work visa for 'foreign nationals who are proceeding to Philippines to engage in any lawful occupation' generally, not a status specific to recent graduates, and it does not itself lead automatically to permanent residence — the Philippines' permanent 'Quota Visa (13)' immigrant-visa category is capped at a small fixed number of persons per nationality per year rather than being a standard route reachable through years of work, so this dataset chose not to represent it as a 'residencyRoute' without being able to verify current quota or wait-time specifics against an official source. This is recorded as an absence of found information, not a confirmed 'no'. inDemandOccupations is left null: no shortage-occupation list tied to any of these categories was found. naturalisationStatus set to 'published-route': the SCN publishes real, itemised documentary, fee and process requirements for RA 9139 administrative naturalisation — per the doc comment on ResidencyPathway.naturalisationStatus this field records only whether criteria are published, not that they are reachable by every foreign graduate; RA 9139 specifically is limited to native-born aliens (a narrower group than 'international graduates' generally), a limitation stated plainly above rather than glossed over. citizenshipTerms records minimumResidenceYears null because neither route’s period could be cited from an official Philippine domain this pass: RA 9139’s administrative route, which the Office of the Solicitor General administers, is open only to a native-born alien who has resided in the Philippines since birth, and the ordinary judicial route for anyone who arrived later — Commonwealth Act No. 473, heard in the Regional Trial Court — could not be located in full text on a Philippine government domain. Route is recorded as application because both routes are applied for by the individual.
Open the immigration authority's own page ↗