Malacañang welcomes US immigration plan

Malacañang welcomed yesterday US President George W. Bush’s proposed immigration program to help millions of illegal aliens — including 300,000 to 500,000 Filipinos — work legally in the United States.

"This is timely because our countrymen in the United States are not a burden to the US government," Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye said.

"It is only appropriate and we are grateful for this development. President Arroyo considers our overseas Filipinos as great Filipino workers, great Filipino investors, and many of them are considered ambassadors of goodwill," Bunye said.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Delia Albert said the proposal would "help protect and ensure the rights of undocumented Filipinos in the United States."

"We would welcome such a program as long as it provides fair treatment for all undocumented workers and not only those from selected countries," she said, adding that Manila will make the "proper representations" to ensure that Filipinos are not discriminated.

Although illegal immigrants in the United States stand to get a reprieve, "we continue to discourage our countrymen from entering the US without proper documentation," Albert said.

In his first major US immigration initiative, Bush suggested the creation of a temporary labor program for undocumented workers to help businesses fill mostly low-paying jobs that Americans disdain.

But he stopped short of offering them outright amnesty saying "we should not give unfair rewards to illegal immigrants in the citizenship process."

The legal status granted by this program will last three years but can be renewed so long as the alien worker continues to have a job. Those who lose their jobs or break the law will be required to return to their country of origin.

Political cynics said Bush’s controversial proposal unveiled on Wednesday had little chance of passing in this year’s abbreviated session of Congress and was merely an attempt to win support for his reelection bid in November among immigrants, especially the 40-million-strong Hispanic-American community, the largest ethnic group in the nation.

Still, Bush supporters hope ethnic voters will at least give him credit for trying to help undocumented residents get on a path to legal status.

Under the Bush plan illegal immigrants in the United States estimated at between 8 million and 14 million, more than half of them Mexicans smuggled across the border, can join the new temporary worker program.

Their inclusion in the tax rolls could help boost government revenue.

"This program will offer legal status, as temporary workers, to the millions of undocumented workers now employed in the United States and to those in foreign countries who seek to participate in the program and have been offered employment here," Bush said.

Asked how the proposed initiative might affect so-called Filipino "TNTs," which stands for "tago ng tago" as undocumented Filipino immigrants are known, Jon Melegrito, a spokesman of the National Federation of Filipino-American Associations, said "we’re still studying it but at the outset it looks promising. We need to look at the fine print."

Immigration lawyer Januario Azarcon in a guarded welcome said, "Bush’s proposal holds a lot of promise but I’m waiting for the actual bill to be introduced in Congress because the devil is in the details." — Marichu Villanueva, Jose Katigbak, Marvin Sy