Grace Poe and anti-OFW laws

SINGAPORE—The absentee voter form had no box for permanent resident (PR), so I checked “others.” With an embarrassed smile, a staffer said I must check “immigrant.”

I spontaneously began cursing. He maintained his smile, hinting every PR had the same reaction. (My 20-minute registration shows the Singapore Embassy’s efficiency despite a full diplomatic load, unlike Hong Kong’s.)

Despite returning to international legal practice, my home remains the Philippine condo I bought with my savings, where my wonderful neighbors, personal effects and law journals are. I wanted to vote there but was wary of my erratic travel schedule, while absentee voters have a month to vote.

After being called an immigrant, I realized that I feel strongly not about Sen. Grace Poe, but how overseas Filipino workers suffer collateral damage in the vicious legal attacks on her.

In the abstract, our Supreme Court offers OFWs the strongest protections. Under the 2009 Serrano decision, any law that treats OFWs differently is a “suspect classification.” Such laws must be justified under the strict rules on racial or religious persecution, which are often legally impossible to do.

In practice, our laws have hidden anti-OFW mindsets. The 1987 Constitution, for example, requires an absentee voting law, but this was passed only in 2003. Romulo Macalintal then petitioned the high court to block PRs like me from voting, invoking the Caasi decision where PRs are presumed to have abandoned the Philippines and cannot meet the Constitution’s requirement that voters be resident for a year.

The Court stressed that residence refers to the place where one lives permanently and intends to return. Absentee voters are obviously physically absent but should be deemed resident if they intend to return, as Sen. Edgardo Angara argued in Congress.

The debates on absentee voting were worryingly legalistic. One justice wrote an opinion replete with impressive citations from foreign scholars that were completely divorced from how any OFW would think about coming home.

For many, accepting PR simply means escaping the uncertainty of renewing shorter-term work visas. When I studied in the United States, the year’s work visas were taken up in a day. In Singapore, election pressures push the government to tighten rules on foreign workers.

Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio cut through the gobbledygook, emphasized that the right to vote is a fundamental human right, and proclaimed: “No frivolous, absurd or impractical conditions should stand in the way of enfranchising overseas Filipinos whose contribution to the national economy is immeasurable.”

Also in 2003, dual citizens led by US OFW leader and philanthropist Loida Nicolas-Lewis sued the Commission on Elections for rejecting them as absentee voters. The Comelec reasoned that citizens naturalized elsewhere severed their ties and cannot be residents entitled to vote.

The court called this absurd, emphasizing the broad intent to enfranchise even Filipinos born overseas who had never traveled home. Still, the decision took three years and the “duals” could not vote in the 2004 elections.

The unnatural mindsets that impeded absentee voting persist in election disqualification cases against balikbayan. Teodulo Coquilla was born in Oras, Eastern Samar, in 1938, enlisted in the US Navy in 1965 and became naturalized. He returned to Oras in 1998 and proclaimed he would run for mayor. He made several trips back to the United States until August 2000, reacquired Philippine citizenship in November 2000, then was elected mayor in the May 2001 elections.

The Court ruled that he lacked the one-year residency required of a local official. It reiterated that citizenship is distinct from residence, but none of his actions showed an intent to live in Oras before reacquiring citizenship. It pointed to his using a balikbayan visitor visa instead of an immigrant visa, and his not registering as a resident alien.

In contrast, Rommel Jalosjos migrated to Australia in 1981, became naturalized, then moved to Ipil, Zamboanga Sibugay in 2008, living with his brother Romeo Jr. He reacquired Philippine citizenship in 2008, renounced Australian citizenship in September 2009, then was elected governor in the May 2010 elections.

The Court reiterated: “There is no hard and fast rule… since the question of residence is a question of intention.” It ruled that Rommel lived in Ipil since November 2008. This was bolstered by his later renunciation of Australian citizenship, since he abandoned his Australian residence and could have no possible residence but Ipil.

I leave readers to compute Poe’s residency using the facts from last week’s column. I ask what natural behavior for a balikbayan is and how he would prioritize immediately renouncing foreign citizenship or PR.

Other subtly anti-OFW policies exist. Since 2012, I have called the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration an institutionalized human rights violation, given their blanket restrictions on OFWs’ right to travel. Weeks before Christmas, OFWs are more alarmed than government over airport bullet scams. Resistance to income tax reform is a very real disincentive to return. Sadly, inherently fragmented OFWs have yet to organize, vote and speak.

The Philippines has a passive aggressive relationship with OFWs, calling them sellouts when they leave and mayabang (arrogant) when they return. Seeing how Poe and Nicolas-Lewis fared with these issues so intimately intertwined with one’s identity, should I ever exercise a right requiring minimum residency, I wonder how many law books will be thrown at me to show I am somehow less Filipino.

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