MANILA, 18 June 2003 — Undocumented workers now account for over 20 percent of overseas Filipinos, combined figures from the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) secretariat at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO), the Philippine Overseas Administration Office and Philippine embassies and consulates abroad say.
Of the 7.41 million Filipinos mapped out by the OAV Secretariat as possible voters in 2004, 1.62 million were found to be with irregular or undocumented status.
Only 3.05 million were overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) while another 2.74 million were immigrants, 96 percent of whom could be found in the United States (1.9 million), Canada (380,000), Australia (204,000), Japan (65,000), the United Kingdom (45,000) and Germany (41,000).
The DFA’s records as of December 2001 showed that undocumented workers made up 18.5 percent of all overseas Filipinos and this has apparently grown. A Manila newspaper said that according to the documents, countries in the Asia-Pacific region had the most number of undocumented OFWs 229,297 out of 1.14 million as of June 2002.
Malaysia topped the countries with a high rate of undocumented Filipinos, with 167,936 recorded by the Philippine Embassy in Kuala Lumpur as of June 2001.
Singapore accounted for 71,917 undocumented OFWs while the Philippine Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, estimated there were 17,456 undocumented Filipinos in that country. Japan has 29,649, Australia has 2,923 and Thailand has 2,478.
The Americas were home to 209,522 undocumented OFWs out of a total 2.5 million Filipino workers.
In the United States alone, there were 206,000 undocumented Filipinos.
In the Middle East and Africa, Philippine embassies have recorded 96,996 undocumented Filipinos out of an estimated 1.3 million OFWs, according to a 2001 report submitted to the DFA.
Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and Japan are the top three working destinations of Filipinos while the United States remains the top choice for immigration.
