“Trump wants to play a different kind of Moses and force a great Exodus, but for sure, he will not pick up the bill.”
Sixty-eight days from now, after Donald Trump’s inaugural as the 47th POTUS after serving as its 45th, he is expected, as he has vowed during and after the historic campaign of 2024, that he will order a mass deportation of all illegally residing “migrants” to what he thinks he can recreate as the “land of milk and honey”.
He has accused these illegally staying persons of stealing jobs that citizens of his country should be having, making these persons of mixed ancestries, whether from Mexico and other parts of the Caribbean and South American countries, or from different Asian countries, villains who must be deported en masse.
It is the easiest promise for Trump to undertake. He needs to hit the ground running.
Constructing a “great wall” in the southern border will take years, and lots of money which Mexico will not pay. Increasing tariffs as a punitive measure against the incredible rise of China is something his economic managers will yet need to weigh against inflation and a dangerous trade war. The US, after all, is no longer the economic uber-power it once was, and higher tariffs would mean higher prices that American consumers will have to bear.
Talking to Putin to cease his invasion and getting Zelensky or the Ukrainians to accede to a negotiated solution by ceding border lands with the hegemon beside them will not be an easy undertaking. Neither is the conflict in the Middle East going to be a walk in the park for Trump, although he is better at transactions than the Democrats and Biden were.
So the immediate action right after January 20 will be to expel all illegal aliens. Even our ambassador has already issued a call for our “T n T” kababayans to leave before they are apprehended and deported.
It will be a reverse diaspora for what is conservatively estimated to be 200,000 Filipinos in the US of A. Many have been staying in America for decades even. And it is not an easy undertaking, with its impact on our economy quite considerable.
Unlike Mexicans and other undocumented migrants who can be trucked to the south of the border, our kababayans will need to fly out, whether at their personal expense or with lots of repatriation assistance from our government.
Senator Imee Marcos was right in calling the attention of Congress on the need to provide funds in the general appropriations bill passed by the House and is now up for the Senate to alter or improve.
We cannot be unprepared for an eventuality staring us in the face. Better for solons to give up slices from their pork barrel entitlements, which cost us a trillion pesos in all, perhaps more, what with all the ayuda they are dispensing at the expense of major infrastructure projects.
The return of our kababayans will mean a drought in remittances for their families here. That is quite a hefty sum that will dent consumer spending which is the biggest part of our GDP.
And since many are part of our extended family system, they live with US-naturalized citizens or green card-holding relatives who have been used to depending on them to chip in for the extended family expenses such as rent, utilities, even food. Such is the reality for many of our TnT kababayans and the relatives who host them.
When I was assigned in Taiwan as chairman and resident representative of MECO, we had to plan ahead for the possibility of hostilities breaking up between the mainland and the island. With more than 150,000 Filipinos working there, immediate repatriation would be a nightmare.
MECO saved through the years for such a contingency, such that when the pandemic struck in 2020, along with our prolonged lockdowns, we faced an existential problem. We had to let go of employees, especially officers, took pay cuts, closed down one of our branch offices, cut administrative expenses considerably. Despite these measures, we never touched our contingency fund.
(MECO subsists on self-generated income, 75-80% of which comes from visa fees paid by Taiwanese visitors to the Philippines, plus passport renewals and notarial service fees. Being a private SEC-registered corporation, it does not get any funding from the national government. In fact, 20% of its gross revenues are remitted to the government.)
Like the US of A, one can only ship out our OFWs in Taiwan by air or perhaps maritime vessels.
Trump wants to play a different kind of Moses and force a great Exodus, but for sure, he will not pick up the bill. It will present a big, immediate problem for the country.
