While there is not much room for discussions on the immigration woes of Filipinos in the United States, the Philippines would ensure that they are sent back home and not to other countries. (Video courtesy of PTV via RTVM)
00:00I think we probably will not need to because we've had discussions already.
00:06I've had meetings with the Department of Homeland Security on how we can cooperate with the United States on how to handle illegal immigration.
00:16As I've always said, those that have a legal path should have already contacted immigration lawyers.
00:25We have volunteer Filipino-American lawyers' associations that have come forward to help our Filipino cababayans.
00:34But I think at the end of the day, the laws of the United States must be respected, just like we expect citizens who come to the Philippines to also respect our laws.
00:46So the bottom line is there is really not much room for discussion, but to simply work in such a way that all Filipinos that are up for deportation will be deported to the Philippines and not to a third country,
01:02which I think has already been agreed upon that any kind of deportation will be.
01:08As long as they're Filipino citizens, we will make sure that they are deported to the Philippines.
01:14Do we have a recent number as to the number of people that do we know specifically for?
01:19We don't have the exact number, but we're talking here about anywhere between perhaps a little less than 100,000 maybe.
01:26But again, these are confidential matters that the Homeland Security and the immigration, U.S. immigration,
01:35and they only inform us about this when they see that it's important for the Philippine Embassy to work with them on how we can repatriate these Filipinos.
01:45And, sorry to ask, these Filipinos are usually, most of them are from which state and what sectors are they engaged in?
01:53Well, a large number, of course, of Filipinos are concentrated in California, so you can imagine that we probably may have quite a number of them in the West Coast.
02:03We do have some of them, of course, here in the East Coast, but generally it's the concentration of Filipinos are in California.
02:23So now, we get started.
02:23We have a lot of them, but finally we also can imagine.
