Our foreign policy

With our population growing faster than the economy and jobs getting harder to come by, more and more Filipino workers are given no choice but to look elsewhere for jobs. Today, there are over 12 million Filipinos working all over the world, some even as far as Siberia. With the appointment of former Ambassador Albert del Rosario as the new Foreign Affairs Secretary, the country should get a fresh start with the DFA’s redefined role especially with what is happening in Libya. It was certainly good for the new Foreign Secretary to travel to Tunisia and see for himself the evacuation and repatriation of OFWs stranded in Libya, giving a semblance of order to the disjointed efforts of concerned government agencies. No question that with Albert del Rosario’s background in management by objective, he can very well put new meaning to the role our Ambassadors will play in the coming decade.

Considering the current turmoil in the Arab world that has displaced and endangered thousands of OFWs, it should come as no surprise that the new DFA Secretary will need to reshape our foreign policy — declaring three pillars that would focus on national security, economic diplomacy and most importantly, the protection of the welfare of Filipinos abroad, promising to review bilateral agreements and strengthen protective measures. That is certainly welcome news to OFWs who are feeling disappointed at the seeming slow response of our government. A disappointed OFW bitterly complained that, “If they call us heroes why aren’t they taking care of us,” recalling the slow response and the lack of contingency measures in the wake of the Libyan turmoil.

But the fact of the matter is, which Albert himself admitted, we don’t have the resources to evacuate Filipino workers especially in large numbers. There are over 300,000 Filipinos working in Saudi Arabia alone. In the past, a number of Filipinos working abroad have been caught in the crossfire (like what happened in 1990 during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in 2006 for instance).

The estimated 12 million Filipinos working abroad are mostly doctors, nurses, engineers, IT professionals, domestic helpers, teachers and laborers (the number could be bigger due to undocumented workers). While the most number of OFWs are in the US numbering about three million, a lot more are concentrated in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the rest of the Arab world including Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait. There are in fact Filipino engineers working in Siberia, the Baltic seas and the island of Sakhalin in Russia. Who knows, we may need to open a consulate in Siberia one day where Albert can send a few people who need to be either literally or figuratively frozen temporarily.

In any case, only a handful of workers had been repatriated from Libya with initial efforts coming from their employers. While many other nationals were quickly evacuated by their respective governments before violence broke out, some Philippine officials did not even know the distance from Benghazi to Tripoli. Worse, the current Philippine Ambassador has been a no-show since the crisis erupted, and no one knows where he is holed up.

Secretary Del Rosario’s plan to appoint as few “political appointees” as possible is definitely necessary since it has become increasingly clear that we need career Ambassadors with experience in ensuring the safety and protection of Filipinos working in foreign countries. Perhaps what we really need nowadays are Ambassadors who are also familiar with the situation of migrant workers and recognize the need for speed, so to speak, in critical circumstances especially when lives hang in the balance. Like what we saw in China recently, there will be more Filipinos getting into trouble with the law in foreign countries. More often than not, we will find ourselves compromising our “mutual respect” relationship with host countries just to save OFWs’ necks. For instance, how do we solve the current crisis with China over their intrusion into our territorial waters in the Spratlys? There are in fact many people who believe that if these workers are truly guilty of the crimes they committed, then they must pay for it. Otherwise, we will find ourselves always begging countries to spare them — and at what cost? In fact, while many countries have already condemned Gadhafi, we can’t openly do so for fear of jeopardizing our workers’ safety.

No doubt the role of the new Philippine Ambassador to majority of countries where we have a representation is more complex than ever. For one, he must be familiar with the working environment of our OFWs. Most of all, he will need to balance and protect our national interest with that of an individual Filipino worker’s welfare.

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With 1,250 visa applications a day, the new Consular Building in the US Embassy compound along Roxas Boulevard has finally been completed and will be opened on Wednesday. The multi-billion peso building has 99 service windows for visa applications (from the previous 66) which will make the process faster and more convenient, doing away with the long lines of people outside the Embassy premises. The Manila consular office is the biggest in the world, and with the new $140 processing fee, that’s an estimated P7.5 million per day (at an exchange rate of P43 to the dollar). The building was constructed by Makati Development Corp., the construction arm of Ayala Land. The Zobel brothers Fernando and Jaime were given a private tour of the new building the other day. US Ambassador Harry Thomas told me the project created 2,000 jobs and represents the Embassy’s continuing commitment in the Philippines.

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