| Photo by Victoria Prymak on Unsplash
Part XII of “The Filipino Melting Pot” Series
This columnist discussed “The ‘Filipino Melting Pot’ Is Getting Global and Gigantic” on March 3, 2021. It was Part I of a new “Overseas-Filipino Melting Pot” (OFMP) series.
Its lead paragraph said, “Remember the days when Buckingham Palace said that the sun never sets in the British Empire? At the height of its glory, all countries except 22 were occupied, invaded, or ruled by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But today, the flag of Britannia flies only in 14 territories outside of the UK.”
Many Filipinos settled as immigrants and became citizens of many countries that needed (and appreciated) skilled workers, especially medical professionals. And thus, to borrow the British saying, today “the sun never sets” in the 100-or-more countries where Overseas-Filipino workers (OFW) and Filipino immigrants live and work. They created the “Overseas-Filipino Melting Pot”. The OFMP is now the biggest in the world — from the viewpoint of geopolitics and the number of nations where OFWs and Filipino settlers are found..
In 1950, The Reader’s Digest featured an article on whether the Philippines would go the way of China, which became a communist-led country in 1949. Filipinos were beginning to enjoy more of their independence in 1950, which the United States returned to them on July 4, 1946. Americans feared then that communist rebels would win in a virtual civil war in the Philippines, especially since there was also unrest in Muslim Mindanao.
The said 1950 article described the capital city of the Philippines this way: “Manila is but a big slum with a small jeweled city in it”. In the 1930s, the City of Manila — as the capital of a U.S. colony — was described by many journalists as the “Pearl of the Orient.” But the battle to liberate Manila from the Japanese Imperial Army virtually destroyed it in February of 1945. Manila became the second most-devastated city after Warsaw (Poland) during World War II.
And compounded by post-war corruption of Filipino policy- and decision-makers — as promoted, and financed, allegedly by The Imperial Manila (TIM) — Metropolitan Manila (the so-called National Capital Region or NCR) slowly became a sarcasm today. For how could a former “Pearl of the Orient” and show window of the only predominantly Catholic country in the Far East be known now as the “homeless capital of the world”?
On December 30, 2020, this column addressed the homelessness crisis of the world to then-President-elect Joe Biden. It cited a list of the top five cities in the world with the largest number of homeless people. The article was entitled “A Biden Doctrine Can Reinvent Geopolitics.”
The third paragraph told of the Top 5 Homeless Cities Around the World. Sadly, according to Arcgis.com, the Philippines is the international capital of homelessness, followed by four of the world’s biggest cities. Included in the list:
- Manila, the Philippines, has a population of nearly 14 million. The most homeless city globally is Manila, with 3.1 million homeless people, including 70,000 children.
- New York, U.S., home to 8.5 million people, is the second-most-homeless city globally, with the homeless population being 74,000.
- Mumbai, India, total population: 18,500,000; homeless population: 60,000
- Los Angeles, U.S., total population: 4,000,000; homeless at 58,000. And
- Moscow, Russia, total population: 12,000,000; homeless at 58,000
Thirteen years ago, this journalist formed a Facebook Group called FilipinoExodus/Sanctuary Chapter of the OFW/OF Nation. The said Facebook Public Group carries a Mission Statement, which is to become an online Think Tank that will provide solutions applicable to the Filipino homeland for the problems that resulted from the Filipino Diaspora.
