Absentee voting and dual citizenship

Michael L. Tan, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Asia News Network, Manila

Instead of launching more investigations, our legislators should seriously discuss two pending bills that affect the lives of our overseas Filipinos.

The two bills are very different. One concerns the right to vote of Filipinos abroad who have retained Filipino citizenship. The other proposes dual citizenship, which means, for example, a Filipino who wants to become American can do so without renouncing his Filipino citizenship.

If we want to set our priorities right, we should fast-track the bill to allow absentee voting. The main impediment to absentee voting is technical in nature, that is, minimizing the possibilities of fraud. But that should not be grounds to continue to withhold the right to vote, especially when an estimated 10 percent of our adult population works overseas.

Absentee voting will force our politicians to look at our overseas workers as more than just sources of foreign exchange. The politicians know they can't quite use traditional gimmicks to court the overseas workers. There are no babies to kiss, no hands to shake, so if you don't deliver on promises, then you don't get a vote, which is the way elections should go.

On the matter of dual citizenship, my feelings are more ambivalent. The rationale behind the proposal is that this would allow us to tap more into the talents, and financial resources, of Filipinos who would otherwise have been forced to give up Filipino citizenship. Dual citizenship offers "perks"-Filipinos would be encouraged to invest here because they can own land, for example, which they can't once they've renounced Filipino citizenship.

I agree that we do lose out on so much talent once Filipinos take up citizenship in another country. But there's more to loving a country than citizenship. If I may use outside examples, we know that many overseas Chinese are major investors in China, and often do this without making money or with very little profit. They do this without having to take up Chinese citizenship. The Chinese government spells out the rules, with as many restrictions as there are incentives.

The problem really is that there's little love lost when Filipinos settle in the United States, Canada or Australia. A Filipino cultural identity is weak to begin with and disappears quickly, way before renouncing Filipino citizenship.

I am not faulting the Filipino alone. Our mental colonization was thorough: The Americans made sure about that so that Filipinos now more voracious defenders of American government policies than Americans themselves. The coconut comes to mind- brown on the outside, white inside.

My point is that dual citizenship will not necessarily mean a pouring in of investments from overseas Filipinos, or a surge in patriotic feelings for Inang Bayan.

I'm hopeful about change.