The Philippine government has advised undocumented Filipinos in the United States to return home.
President Rodrigo Duterte has clarified that he will not send an ambassador who could legally defend overstaying Filipino workers (OFWs) there.
“If you are not allowed to stay there, if you are overstaying, get out. If you are caught and deported I will not lift a finger,” Gulf News quoted Duterte as saying.
“We have no ambassador to the US. Up to now we have no ambassador to the US. I don’t feel like sending one,” Duterte reportedly said.
Migrante, a non-government organization that assists OFWs worldwide, said during a protest rally in Manila, “The president should tell how he can help some 300,000 undocumented Filipinos in the US.”
Duterte should reassure the Filipinos who elected him to office last May 2016, Migrante reportedly said.
Meanwhile, former cabinet members have urged Duterte to appoint an ambassador to the US, the report said.
“This is a matter that should be urgently revisited. Such a preference not to send an ambassador (to the US) may be construed as a disturbing message in relations between the two countries,” former foreign affairs secretary Albert del Rosario was quoted as saying.
“It is likely that they (in the US) will look kindly on Filipinos if there is a Philippine representation in Washington DC,” said former foreign affairs undersecretary and Permanent Representative to the US Lauro Baja.
Philippines’ senior official Patrick Chuasoto now heads the Philippine Embassy in Washington.
Distancing the Philippines from the US, a military ally, Duterte earlier said he wanted to limit the US-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement (it was signed in 1998 and ratified by the Philippine Senate in 1999) to humanitarian assistance, reported Gulf News.
He also reportedly threatened to abrogate the 2014 US-Philippine Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) which allows increased rotation of US troops and their access to Philippine bases nationwide.
Duterte has pivoted to China, and announced closer ties with Russia — after The Hague-based Permanent Court Arbitration ruled last July 2016 that China’s entire claim of the South China Sea and its enhancement of rocks and shoals into small islands there were illegal, said the news portal.
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