Philippines

https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2023/6/15/Marcos-recommendations-US-Afghan-employees.html

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. “will be given the recommendation” on the request of the United States for the Philippines to take in Afghan nationals fleeing the Taliban, Ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Romualdez said Thursday.

Romualdez earlier clarified that they are not refugees but former Afghan employees of the US government “whose lives are in danger and are to be given Special Immigration Visas.”

“He will be given the recommendation whether it is a rightful thing to do,” Romualdez told CNN Philippines’ The Source.

“This request came to us in October of last year, we are already in June… We are talking about eight or nine months since they made that request,” he added. “In fact it went through our national security cluster…There was absolutely no intention whatsoever that it is going to be a sudden thing.”

Senate Minority Leader Koko Pimentel and Senator Imee Marcos have questioned the request of the US.

For Romualdez, the Philippine government should accept the request since this is the “morally right thing to do” and that “it’s a humanitarian act of gesture.”

“We’ve had this type of tradition for many, many years since the 1920s—the white Russians, the Jewish people that were allowed to come in here by President Manuel Quezon, the father of the president (Ferdinand Marcos Sr.) during the Vietnam war,” he pointed out.

Such gestures kept the good relationship between the Philippines and the countries that benefited from it, he added.

The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations chaired by Sen. Marcos will be conducting an “urgent” public hearing on Friday to look into the request "due to the significance and urgency of the matter."