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The Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) urged Filipino immigrants abroad, who are naturalized citizens of foreign countries, to re-acquire their Philippine citizenship.
In celebration of Overseas Filipinos Month, CFO director Rodrigo Garcia Jr. said they want Filipinos overseas to be in touch with their homeland, noting that re-acquiring their Philippine citizenship will not forfeit their foreign citizenship.
“it doesn’t mean that when you (reacquire) your Filipino citizenship, you will lose your foreign citizenship. So you will have the best of both worlds,” Garcia said.
He said Filipinos can still visit the country, own lands, and establish businesses.
“What we want is even if they are overseas, their hearts remain here and the properties which they can benefit from. We’d also like them to become partners for economic development,” Garcia added.
Garcia said they also want overseas Filipinos to be able to vote in national elections, which is allowed by the Overseas Voting Law.
Republic Act 9225, or the Dual Citizenship Law, allows natural-born Filipinos who have become national citizens abroad to retain or reacquire their Filipino citizenship by taking an oath before a Philippine Consular office.
The processing fee for dual citizenship usually costs $50 or roughly P2,900.
According to the 2020 data of the Philippine Statistics Authority, the US has the most number of Filipinos with dual citizenship at 50,089, followed by Canada (23,727), Australia (2,733), South Korea (2,252), Germany (1,969), Italy (1,699), United Kingdom (1,498), Spain (1,219), Switzerland (742), and France (720).
CFO data since 1981 show that more than half or 60% of the total number of Filipino emigrants are in the United States. The next most popular destinations among Filipino emigrants after the US are Canada at 20.12%, Japan at 6.21% and Australia at 5.9%, followed by Italy, New Zealand, UK, Germany, South Korea and Spain.
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