I Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Part V of “Commonwealth Option for U.S.A.” Series
On August 25, 2021, this column presented a vision called “North America Is the Biggest New Frontier for Filipinos.” It said that “in 2018, the American Community Survey estimated the population of Filipinos in the United States to be more than 4 million. However, a 2019 report by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center states that at least 4.2 million Filipinos make up 18% of the Asian population. They are the third-largest Asian origin group in the U.S. — after the Chinese and the Asian Indians.”
This column said last Sunday that there would be more bright ideas that would be presented today. Mentioned in Part IV was a suggestion to form a viable new air carrier called “Kentucky-Filipino Commonwealth Airline” (KFC Air). The new airline may be owned by its executives, workers, and employee-and-passenger co-ops. Kentucky’s pension funds can be invested in the venture plus capital inputs by Filipino Americans, who now have over five million American citizens, immigrants, and contract workers.
The Kentucky-based millions of projected new Filipino nurses are also expected to invest in the airline. After all, the nursing and other Filipino medical students will travel by air from the Philippines to the United States to complete their studies and be board-certified. Then, when they are already working, they take annual vacations in their homeland.
The proposed Kentucky-Filipino Chicken (K-FC) franchises are suggested to be part of a food-court venture complete with other businesses. The proposal is attracting investors. A Syrian-American partnership that owns liquor stores and operates gas stations in Southern California has pledged $40 million as an initial investment from its ethnic community. We are optimistic that Filipino-American communities will rally and invest part of their $92-billion combined gross annual household incomes.
Then, like fast-food chains, it will also sell franchises for food courts. Consortia of community co-ops can add more financial muscle and many consumers to the ventures. The businesses in Kentucky and eventually all over North America will attract investments from other minority groups. From the viewpoints of history, heritage, and kinship, Filipinos are the closest Asians to Native American Indians, Black Americans, Mexicans, and other Hispanic Americans, as this column has documented.
“There may be many downstream projects that can benefit Kentucky-based manufacturers of EVs and hybrid vehicles, EV batteries, solar panels, and building components.”
Many downstream projects may benefit Kentucky-based manufacturers of EVs and hybrid vehicles, EV batteries, solar panels, and building components. Kentucky-based firms like UPS and other businesses will boom. Construction firms, a water bottling company, and other food and beverage plants will cash in. Bluegrass companies shall handle exports and imports to and from the Philippines and the ASEAN region.
Kentucky’s 60 credit unions, rural hospitals, nursing homes, and agricultural sectors will reap socioeconomic benefits and investments. Farmers will thrive, as Filipino-Kentucky consortia may team up with communities to locally produce ingredients for food court kitchens—from chicken, eggs, sweet-and-Irish potatoes to bamboo shoots, vegetables, and fish products from fresh-water fishponds nourished by the Mississippi River.
With the help of Team Kentucky and state officials led by Governor Andy Beshear, the Bluegrass Commonwealth can host the corporate headquarters of many, if not all, of the ventures. Eventually, the firms will have branches, franchises, and other business opportunities in North America and in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), where the Philippines has the second-biggest population after Indonesia.
There is a coming workshop on Cooperative Economics at an “East Meets West” global business conference in Orland, FL, on June 19-22, 2025. The conference and workshop can highlight proposed cooperative ventures headquartered in the Bluegrass Commonwealth. As keynote speaker, Governor Beshear may also like to address a business luncheon for the workshop participants. In time, Kentucky will become the epicenter of Co-op Economics, replacing “crony capitalism.” It may showcase the economy of, for, and by people and their cooperatives, credit unions, and labor co-ops.
The event is sponsored by the Federation of Philippine-American Chambers of Commerce (FPACC), the Philippine-American Chamber of Commerce of Central Florida, and the FPACC Foundation, Inc. The Kentucky Governor’s Economic Development Office and Corporate Kentucky are welcome to join the workshop, which can result in the signing of joint-venture agreements. There will be delegates from the various FPACC chapters and the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of the Philippines.
