“We wish our president a successful visit to the US of A just as we hope the American government will treat its former colony as an equal partner in their Far East”
An Austrian delegation came to town recently and met with our migrant worker department officials.
They are in need of many medical workers, particularly nurses, and are offering top price, about four times what our private hospitals pay their health workers.
Surely, there will be a long line of applicants willing to learn the German language which is a requirement for them to work in Austria and though German is rather difficult to learn for Filipinos, try our hopeful nurses certainly will.
We are all happy that more OFW’s will mean more dollars coming in to prop up an economy whose agriculture is fading and whose manufacturing sector is dependent on raw material and factory supply imports.
But our health system, already burdened by lack of infrastructure and vanishing personnel resources on top of the high cost of medical care and pharmaceutical remedies, will be more and more challenged by the migration to other countries.
North America, the UK and Europe also want our nurses and physical therapists. Soon, our hospitals will have fewer and fewer medical professionals to care for the health needs of our 114 million population, and more.
Today’s solutions, tomorrow’s problems.
Even war-threatened Taiwan wants more Filipino workers.
They are in a demographic winter, with fewer Taiwanese entrants to the labor force, and the few who are of working age prefer cushy office jobs to factory work.
Three ASEAN countries constitute the bulk of migrant workers in Taiwan: Vietnamese who find some facility in learning Mandarin; Filipinos who are conversant in English; and Indonesians who constitute the bulk of the caregivers for their many senior citizens.
When I left Taipei in the middle of 2021, there were around 180,000 kababayans working mostly in factories, and some caregivers and fishermen.
Now, MECO Chairman Silvestre Bello III said in a recent interview we have some 200,000 OFWs in the island.
Because the Taiwanese government wants its students to learn English, they are now hiring more and more Filipino teachers, and offering salaries thrice what they earn in our country.
Soon we will have a dearth of qualified teachers in our country, while our population continues to grow by 1.3 pervcent annually, or about a million and a half more each year who will go to school six years thereafter.
Again, today’s solutions; tomorrow’s problems.
The AFP spokesman, brimming with enthusiasm at the site of 17,000 joint American and Filipino soldiers doing their Balikatan, and after the government’s announcement that four new sites will be accorded EDCA accreditation, proudly declares there is a possibility that more and more locations in the Philippines will be lent to the US.
We need a full security cover, something like a 360-degree or all-around security umbrella to protect our sovereignty and maritime resources, he stated.
Soon, our officials may resurrect the “ardent” desire of many to be incorporated into the Union, as the 51st state of mighty and mightily-failing America.
Which of course, the Trumpian supporters and the WASPs will reject forcefully.
Imagine 65 million voters coming from the Philippines, which has a land area smaller than California?
With that number, we can elect Manny Pacquiao president of the US of A, where he after all maintains some kind of domicile.
Reading between the lines of statements issued after Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang, a good personal friend of our Philippine Ambassador to Beijing, Jimmy Flor Cruz, met with the president and before that, Secretary Enrique Manalo and DFA officials, it seems that testy relations of late have been cooled.
“Chill lang,” as we stated in our previous article last week, or better yet, chill muna.
No sooner had Minister Qin left Manila than the AFP spokesman enthusiastically foresaw more EDCA sites all over the archipelago, some kind of 360-degree security blanket.
Okay then, why not another EDCA site in Burgos, Ilocos Norte or Laoag City where there is an international airport?
After all, if Puerto Princesa and Mactan’s international airports are now EDCA sites, should Senator Imee object to Laoag?
Or maybe add Davao International Airport, if we want 360-degree cover. Over former President Duterte’s dead body though.
Despite statements the relations between China and the Philippines are now hunky-dory, watch how the promised investments and bilateral aid will grind exceedingly slow in the following months and years.
Watch too how tourists from China, and never mind the dwindled POGO workers, dash the hopes of Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco for a renaissance of the 2018-2019 numbers when a million and more came to the country from the mainland.
As for American tourists, well, they are mostly balikbayans who will come every Christmas season anyway, or during their hometown fiestas.
Ah, but we can count the American soldiers coming in for Balikatan and to construct temporary facilities in the EDCA sites as tourists, ne c’est pas?
For Olongapo, it will be “happy days are here again”!
And Harry Roque will have more rape and sexual assault victims to lawyer for.
Meanwhile Chinese ambassador to France Lu Shaye, in a televised interview last Friday, said countries which emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union “don’t have effective status under international law because there is not an international agreement confirming their status as sovereign nations.”
What school of international relations did this guy graduate from?
The furor was so great all over that the French foreign ministry summoned Lu for a rebuke, while the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, once also annexed by the Soviets would likewise summon him to explain.
Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign minister, the durable Sergei Lavrov spoke before the United Nations where he warned the world faces extremely dangerous times, and faced a boycott of US, UK and EU representatives.
Qin Gang has a lot of work to do polishing China’s international image with guys like Lu and Huang under his supervision.
Never since the Cold War has the whole world been so polarized.
President Marcos Jr. hies off to the US for a four-day working visit where he will meet his counterpart in the White House, who this week played host to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol who will be on a state visit till Friday.
Yoon also addressed a joint session of the US Congress and today will deliver a speech at Harvard after visiting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The US and South Korea are commemorating 70 years of alliance at a time when the North and South were shooting at each other, and the Philippines sent a military contingent where one of our great presidents, Fidel V. Ramos, soldiered, with one of our contemporary heroes, then just 17-year old Ninoy Aquino reported for the Manila Times.
At the time, barely a decade after the end of the Pacific War, we were economically better off than South Korea, considered a beacon of democracy in Asia.
Now South Korea, despite its continuing conflict with its North. is a First World country despite a paucity of natural resources.
We wish our president a successful visit to the US of A just as we hope the American government will treat its former colony as an equal partner in their Far East.