MANILA – Sen. Leila de Lima claimed there is an influx of Chinese nationals employed and residing in the Philippines. She wants this investigated by the Senate.
The “surging” number of Chinese people in the Philippines “steals jobs away from ordinary Filipinos and creates a surge in property prices,” the senator said.
De Lima said the Senate should assess the implementation of existing immigration and labor laws to ensure that Filipinos are protected against adverse effect caused by immigration surge.
“The increasingly lax control mechanisms over the influx of Chinese nationals in the Philippines have led to concerns on whether we have enough capability to properly enforce our immigration and labor laws to the detriment of our national interest,” she said in filing Senate Resolution 751.
The number of Chinese travelers to the Philippines grew 54.43 percent last year, according to the 2017 Annual Visitor Sample Survey of the Department of Tourism. In the first quarter of this year alone, a total of 371,429 Chinese visitors went to the country.
There was also a 33.4 percent increase – from 28,371 in 2015 to 41,993 in 2016 – in the Alien Employment Permit (AEP) granted to foreign nationals who want to get employed in the Philippines, the Labor department said.
Moreover, since the start of the Duterte administration, over 50 offshore gambling companies catering to overseas Chinese punters have received permits to operate in Manila, de Lima claimed.
The move employed some 200,000 predominantly Chinese workers who have been arriving since late 2016, she said.
“The surge of AEP issuance means there is a number of available jobs in the Philippines even while Filipinos continue to seek opportunities abroad and unemployment remains a concern,” said de Lima.
With the influx of Chinese nationals employed and living in the Philippines, “there is a dangerous possibility of the real estate market pricing out Filipinos out of their homes, especially in areas near businesses that heavily employ Chinese nationals, like casinos and resorts,” she claimed.
“There is also the danger of our economy being too dependent on Chinese tourists and clients where any change in policies by the China government could effectively stall, if not cripple, our local economy,” said de Lima./PN
