ALLOW Chinese nationals to seek jobs in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte said on Saturday, February 23, even after he previously called for a “careful” processing of deportation of illegal Chinese workers in the country.
Duterte made the remark as he raised concern that Filipino workers in China will be the most affected, if his administration decides to deport Chinese nationals working in the Philippines.
“‘Yung mga Chinese dito, hayaan mo iyan na dito mag-trabaho. Hayaan mo. Bakit? (Let the Chinese nationals work here. Let them be. Why?) We have 300,000 Filipinos in China,” the President said during the campaign sortie of his political party in Laguna.
“Kaya hindi ako... Baka sabihin, ‘Oh, umalis kayo dito, deport ka doon.’ Eh kung biglang paalisin doon, 300,[000] of them (That’s why I cannot do it because they might say, ‘Leave here. You’re deported.’ So 300,000 of them will be affected],” he added.
There has been a concern over the seeming influx of Chinese nationals who ended up as workers in the country.
Around 51,000 of 115,652 alien employment permits have been granted to Chinese nationals from 2015 to 2017, according to the data from the Department of Labor and Employment.
Around 2,000 Chinese nationals were also given jobs in the past three years.
Malacañang earlier explained that more Chinese workers were hired because Filipinos opt to seek jobs overseas.
In 2018, China opened 300,000 jobs for Filipinos.
Duterte, in November last year, said his government needs to be circumspect in deporting the Chinese nationals illegally working in the country, raising worry that illegal Filipino workers overseas may also suffer the same fate.
“It’s not okay. It’s not okay but there has to be an arrangement there,” he said in an interview in Panglao, Bohol on November 27, 2018.
“They should be deported, but in the same manner, you should be careful because when you point to the Chinese, you also point [at] yourself, at us. There are so many thousands of Filipinos working there or went inside China as tourists and working there,” he added. (SunStar Philippines)