MANILA: Two of the wealthiest and most successful Filipino women overseas have now declared that the Filipino working abroad will no longer be called by what they call demeaning acronyms, like “OCWs” (Overseas Contract Workers) or “OFWs” (Oversea Filipino Workers) but more respectfully referred to as “Global Filipinos.”
The two New York-based ladies, industry heiress Loida Nicolas Lewis and entrepreneur-fashion designer Josie Natori, thanked former five-time House of Representatives Speaker Jose de Venecia for his official biography “Global Filipino,” written by former Wall Street Journal Editor Brett Decker, published by Regnery Publishing in Washington D.C.
The occasion was the book launching at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC followed by another launching at the Natori Fashion House in New York City, attended by government officials, business leaders and friends in the Filipino communities in the US East Coast.
Decker said that De Venecia, who worked in the Middle East and North Africa in the 1970s, conceived and implemented the dollar-remittance program that has earned the Philippines more than $200 billion since 1968 and in 2008 alone raised more than $16 billion for the Central Bank, from remittances by an estimated nine million Filipinos working overseas.
There are now some 1.2 million Filipinos in Saudi Arabia and about 500,000 in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, and Libya.
The biggest contributor to foreign exchange remittances in the Philippines is still the US with more than 2.5 million Filipinos there, followed by Saudi Arabia, countries in the European Union and neighboring states in Southeast Asia.
This dollar-remittance program has become a model for the other Third World countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, with large expatriate populations in other countries.
Lewis also hailed De Venecia for conceiving the dual-citizenship law that enables Filipinos who became US or European citizens to retain their Filipino citizenship, income tax-exemption for overseas Filipinos who no longer need pay taxes to the Philippine government to prevent double taxation, the right to vote for overseas Filipinos, and now for promoting the “global image of the global Filipinos.”
Decker said other Global Filipinos are pianist Cecille Licad, singer Lea Salonga, fashion designer Monique Lhuillier, heart surgeon Dr. Julio Garcia, Silicon Valley’s Conrado Banatao, the architect Daniel Romualdez, journalists Veronica Pedrosa, Gene Marcial, Eddie Lachica, Juan Gathonton, Leslie Perez Norton, Ricky Hizon, Bert Pelayo, Christine Cunanan Miki, and Roger Lagmay Oriel, the boxer Manny Pacquiao, bankers and financial and industrial wizards Ramon Ang, Bobby Ongpin, Washington Sycip and Manny Pangilinan, business tycoons Henry Sy, John Gokongwei, Lucio Tan, Manny Villar, Oscar Lopez and Tony Tan Caktiong.
Decker said De Venecia has been for years a trailblazer for the Filipino people.
He said De Venecia has fought relentlessly to cast off the Philippines’ image as the “sick man of Asia” and has sought to bring political, economic, and cultural influence to the dynamic, hard-working Filipino people.
No matter the ultimate outcome of the current political tumult, “what will long linger in the nation’s collective consciousness is the recognition that he — more than any one else in his generation — ushered his people into the age of the Global Filipinos.”
