AT ONE moment, President Rodrigo Duterte declared he was separating from the United States. The next moment, he clarified that separating did not mean severing ties with the US.
Then he rattled off a series of why’s…er, why not’s… he couldn’t sever ties.
Why? “Because there are many Filipinos living and working in the United States.”
Why? “Because the Philippines stands to gain from affiliating with the United States.”
Why? “Because my people is (sic) not ready to sever ties.”
This latest walking back in his pronouncements, all recorded on video clips or sound bytes makes me recall a friend who said, “A new office should be created: The OCIE, meaning the Office for Clarification, Interpretation and Explanation.
In the US, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump should put up a similar office as well. His instances of making pronouncements and then backtracking on them are habitual.
The most recent, which has triggered panic attacks in American citizens, media, and politicians, is Trump’s non-commitment to respect the elections results. Some fora later, he qualified: “I will respect the election results…if I win.”
On the Trump or Clinton choice, it’s easy to understand why many a Filipino immigrant, whether documented or out of status, would go for Clinton. This, despite the US media’s branding her and Trump, as two of the most unpopular ever candidates for US President.
Trump talks of building an “impenetrable and beautiful” wall between the US and Mexico, of sending home the undocumented immigrants and letting them re-apply for the US if interested, of getting rid of the “bad hombres,” and of expelling Latinos, Asians, Muslims, etc. Shades of ethnic cleansing?
Clinton talks of introducing a comprehensive immigration reform and a path to legitimate citizenship within the first 100 days of her presidency.
Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric now sounds awkward and embarrassing now that this year’s six Nobel Prize winners from the US are immigrants.
Awarded for their work in chemistry are Sir J. Fraser Stoddart (born in Scotland); in economics, Oliver Hart (Finland) of Harvard University and Bengt Holmstrom (UK) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and in physics, Duncan Haldane (UK) of Princeton University, David Thouless (Scotland) of Yale University and Michael Kosterlitz (Germany) of Brown University.
The United States remains the country with the most number of Nobel Prize winners since 1901. The National Foundation for American Policy credits the immigration acts of 1965 and then of 1990 for the greater openness of the US, thus becoming the leading destination for research in science and technology, including computers and cancer research.
Awardee Haldane asserts that scientists will continue to go to the US because of its higher-education system and overall commitment to funding research and scientific inquiry.
This, despite the immigration process which is “a bureaucratic nightmare for many people.”
Fellow awardee Sir Fraser Stoddart himself told a US website: “I think the United States is what it is today largely because of open borders.”
Also, the US will remain strong “as long as we don’t enter an era where we turn our back on immigration.”
(lelani.echavez@gmail.com)