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By Madelaine Joy A. Garcia
FILIPINOS are slowly conquering various
countries through sheer numbers.
A recently released report by the World Bank
(WB) identified Filipinos as among the top 10 foreigners in 16 big
and small countries in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America.
The WB’s Migration and Remittances Factbook
2008 cited Filipinos lead the number of foreigners in Australia,
Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Canada, Cyprus, Italy, Japan, Republic
of Korea, Malaysia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Oman, Palau,
Saudi Arabia, the Solomon Islands and the US.
Five of these countries are members of the bloc
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The WB report bared data on the estimated number
of migrants, or what it calls immigrants, based on the 2005 United
Nations Population Division report.
The tiny island of Palau, some 800 kilometers
east of the Philippines, hosts the most number of Filipinos among
3,036 foreigners. This diving haven is home to some 20,000 people.
Data from the state-run Commission on Filipinos
Overseas (CFO) show there are 4,495 Filipinos in Palau. Twenty-one
of them are considered permanent residents, while some 4,434 are
temporary migrant workers. CFO estimates the rest are undocumented.
Manila to Koror, Palau’s capital, is 90
minutes apart. It takes half that time if flying to or from Davao
City.
Meanwhile, Filipinos are the second biggest
foreigner group in Malaysia, Brunei and the United States, according
to the WB report and CFO estimates.
The US, the Philippines’s top source country
of remittances, has some 38.4 million foreigners, says the WB.
Filipinos are behind US neighbor Mexico as the
biggest foreigner group, as CFO estimates that there are now 3.4
million Filipinos in this country.
The WB report showed that of Malaysia’s 1.6
million foreigners, over a hundred thousand are Filipinos (100,233).
CFO’s June 2007 data confirms this.
Brunei, for its part, has some 124,193
foreigners. CFO estimates some 22,939 are Filipinos.
Filipinos form the third-biggest number of
foreigners in Korea (50,165 of a total 551,193 foreigners) and the
Marshall Islands.
The Marshall Islands, located in the western
Pacific Ocean, has a thousand Filipinos as the third biggest
foreigner group out of its estimated number of 1,667 foreigners,
representing 2.7 percent of its total 65,000 population.
Solomon Islands has some 3,279 foreigners, out
of some 489,000 population. CFO estimates there are 758 Filipinos
there.
Filipinos are also the fourth-biggest group in
Italy, with roughly 2.5 million foreigners. Some 119,083 Filipinos
are estimated to be in Italy, says CFO.
Saudi Arabia, the workplace of an estimated
1,016,820 Filipinos according to CFO data, shows that Filipinos are
its fifth biggest immigrant group.
This Islamic state with 24 million population
has some 6.36 million immigrants.
Filipinos form also the fifth-largest immigrant
group in Japan. This country has some 2.05 million foreigners,
according to the World Bank report. There are an estimated 313,291
Filipinos in Japan, CFO data reveals.
Cyprus is estimated to have some 116,137
immigrants and Filipinos are ranked sixth. CFO data show that there
are 12,406 Filipinos in Cyprus.
Filipinos are also the sixth-biggest in Oman,
which has some 627,571 population. CFO estimates there are some
33,000 Filipinos.
Filipinos are the seventh-biggest foreigner
group in Canada that has a total of 6,105,722 foreigners and in
Iceland (with 23,097 foreigners). In these countries, CFO estimates
there are 789,943 and 1,400 Filipinos, respectively.
The eighth-biggest group of foreigners in
Australia’s 4.1 million and Cambodia’s 303,871 immigrant
population are Filipinos, estimated to number 232,447 and 1,572,
respectively.
-- OFW Journalism Consortium
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