Absurd Requirements for Philippine Passport Holder

You can take a First Great Western train from London (Paddington) direct to Swansea (via Reading, Bristol, Newport and Cardiff).

Like I said, it would be hard for you to understand. I also know too, putting myself in your shoes, that it can be quite unfair. That you have a family and children in the Philippines, also a resident, that you should be able to purchase property and house in your name.

If they allow you and other expats who have married Pinoys/Pinays to own lands, then there will be a loophole. Foreigners would just pay Pinoy/Pinays for marriage (abroad) just so they'll be able to purchase lands. Then just divorce the Pinoy/Pinays after.

But remember that there's huge disparity between Filipino purchasing powers and those from overseas like the Chinese, the Americans, the Brits, etc. Plus the Philippines is an island nation, and smaller compared to the likes of US, UK, etc.

Sure you mentioned that wealthy Pinoys buy huge tracts of land, but there still lots of us who cannot even purchase a 250 sq. meter of land.

The salary of most graduates nowadays range between 10,000 to 20,000 gross a month. That's 141 to 282 GBP a month.

And it's very hard to get mortgages and all that. There's so many requirements. We don't have first-home buyer options and other government grants.

So with those, it will be easy for foreigners to buy lots of lands here. Especially in the Philippines, were money rules every thing.

A lot of us cannot compete financially with you British chaps. 100 Million documented Filipinos, but about half or more of those are poor.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. I'll probably take that if the route I mentioned before would take very long. I plan to do a bit of travelling before I start working in Swansea.

I repeat "Nice try" you dont however address my point that reasonable residential qualifications could still be part of the equation a ghastly foreigner being able to own a house and 500sq mt plot will only aid the local economy not tear the patrimony from the hands of poor pinoys who dont have it now!!

My take is that the power elite dont want the idea of fairness and equality at any price that could have a negative impact on there ability to carry on extorting the masses

'Reasonable residential qualifications...'

We have University of Recto, we have corrupt officials, we also have people who you can pay to 'fix' anything for a price.

Mate, as long as you have money here, you can pay for anything. Even the life and death of someone. Even the national laws can be bent. Try watching the news. You'll see Binay and his son disobey court rulings and Senate summons.

Qualifications can be changed according to how much money you have.

Most businesses here are already owned by the Chinese, the Spanish, and the Americans. But at least they are still limited because they own properties through companies and Filipino intermediaries.

But just imagine, if the law changes, suddenly Chinese would start buying off land here. And as an owner of a large tract of land, who would you sell your land to? Someone paying 50 million for it or 30 million for it? 50 Million of course. Nationality be damned, as we're not really patriotic bunch.

Most of us cannot match-up against your purchasing power. Every one of you Brits is for every 6 to 8 of us, financially.

Average salary in the UK is 26,000 GBP per annum (2166 GBP per month ). Average salary in the Philippines is 28,000 PHP a month or 336,000 PHP per annum. That's 394.54 GBP a month or 4734.50 per annum.

26,000 (UK) to 4734.50 (PH) GBP. Seems fair?

Sure you'll be paying taxes and all that. But a whole lot of foreigners can buy houses and properties a lot quicker than we'll be able to. And because of the disparity, if you're smart enough, you'll buy several houses for investments. Then more and more foreigners start purchasing, and it will leave most of us Pinoys to resort to just being tenants unless we're rich enough. Remember that property too can rise in value.

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Don't get me wrong though. I get your plight since you're married with a Pinay and you have kids. And if ever the marriage ends (hopefully and knock on wood, not) you might want assurance for yourself and your children.

But the politics here, when you start with a law like that, it will lead to a lot of loopholes and abuses.

I'm telling you now, it will open up to a lot of Chinese owning lands here.

That's just Philippine politics for you.

Interesting discussion, chaps.

Ah I see what your saying 500 sq mts at 50,000,ooo peso would mean having to pay 100,000 peso £1500 per sq mt and that the chinese would own all of it mind you at current land density each citizen could have 3030 sq mt or 303 million pesos wow they could all buy first world passports with that

50 Million pesos for 1,000 sq mts. That was how much we sold our property in Alabang. So the price range still varies according to the location.

And I'm not saying that in just one instance, the Chinese would buy all lands here.

It will be over time.

Most of the Pinoys who owns lands or can purchase one, are those who have family members abroad or working abroad. OFWs as we call them.

The day that we start allowing foreigners to own lands, will be the day that we become a first-world country. Which is still far-fetched with the way this country is going.

When did you sell that property?

2008.

Ah. So a few years back.

I reckon though the price would would have increased by around 10M now.

Hence why I was able to study in Australia. Pretty expensive, but well-worth it (I hope... Hahahahhahaha).

Nice area. I have been there for a brief visit.

The subdivision where that property is located is called 'Alabang Hills Village.'

The Alabang area is a rich folk area, where a lot of the local celebrities live.

If you have money and want a secure place for your family, it's really a good place. Lots of security guards roaming around, the community is gated and lots of checkpoints.

Outside and inside it, you'll feel like it's two different worlds.

Yes. Gated with security guards. And yes, two different worlds, for sure. The extremes are incredible.

Southvale.

Yes, I read the exact same sentence on the news somewhere else recently.......

Even if I jump through all the hoops, pay all the bribes, run around like an idiot filling in forms, wait the allotted five years without leaving the country, and finally get Filipino citizenship, I STILL can't buy land. All part of a huge 'constitution' system that pretty much cripples the PI in international trade and business. Nobody wants to invest money in a country they can't own anything in.

This is an interesting essay by F. Sionil Jose, well worth a read. Somewhat dated, but interesting none the less.

What did South Korea look like after the Korean War in 1953? Battered, poor - but look at Korea now. In the Fifties, the traffic in Taipei was composed of bicycles and army trucks, the streets flanked by tile-roofed low buildings. Jakarta was a giant village and Kuala Lumpur a small village surrounded by jungle and rubber plantations. Bangkok was criss-crossed with canals, the tallest structure was the Wat Arun, the Temple of the Sun, and it dominated the city’s skyline. Rice fields all the way from Don Muang airport — then a huddle of galvanized iron-roofed bodegas, to the Victory monument. Visit these cities today and weep — for they are more beautiful, cleaner and prosperous than Manila.

In the Fifties and Sixties we were the most envied country in Southeast Asia. Remember further that when Indonesia got its independence in 1949, it had only 114 university graduates compared with the hundreds of Ph.D.’s that were already in our universities. Why then were we left behind? The economic explanation is simple. We did not produce cheaper and better products.

The basic question really is why we did not modernize fast enough and thereby doomed our people to poverty. This is the harsh truth about us today. Just consider these: some 15 years ago a survey showed that half of all grade school pupils dropped out after grade 5 because they had no money to continue schooling. Thousands of young adults today are therefore unable to find jobs. Our natural resources have been ravaged and they are not renewable. Our tremendous population increase eats up all of our economic gains. There is hunger in this country now; our poorest eat only once a day. But this physical poverty is really not as serious as the greater poverty that afflicts us and this is the poverty of the spirit.

Why then are we poor? More than ten years ago, James Fallows, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, came to the Philippines and wrote about our damaged culture which, he asserted, impeded our development. Many disagreed with him but I do find a great deal of truth in his analysis. This is not to say that I blame our social and moral malaise on colonialism alone. But we did inherit from Spain a social system and an elite that, on purpose, exploited the masses. Then, too, in the Iberian peninsula, to work with one’s hands is frowned upon and we inherited that vice as well. Colonialism by foreigners may no longer be what it was, but we are now a colony of our own elite.

We are poor because we are poor — this is not a tautology. The culture of poverty is self-perpetuating. We are poor because our people are lazy. I pass by a slum area every morning - dozens of adults do nothing but idle, gossip and drink. We do not save. Look at the Japanese and how they save in spite of the fact that the interest given them by their banks is so little. They work very hard too.

We are great show-offs. Look at our women, how overdressed, over-coiffed they are, and Imelda epitomizes that extravagance. Look at our men, their manicured nails, their personal jewelry, their diamond rings. Yabang (show offs) - that is what we are, and all that money expended on status symbols, on yabang. How much better if it were channeled into production.

We are poor because our nationalism is inward looking. Under its guise we protect inefficient industries and monopolies. We did not pursue agrarian reform like Japan and Taiwan. It is not so much the development of the rural sector, making it productive and a good market as well. Agrarian reform releases the energies of the landlords who, before the reform, merely waited for the harvest. They become entrepreneurs, the harbingers of change.

Our nationalist icons like Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo Tanada opposed agrarian reform, the single most important factor that would have altered the rural areas and lifted the peasant from poverty. Both of them were merely anti-American.

And finally, we are poor because we have lost our ethical moorings. We condone cronyism and corruption and we don’t ostracize or punish the crooks in our midst. Both cronyism and corruption are wasteful but we allow their practice because our loyalty is to family or friend, not to the larger good.

We can tackle our poverty in two very distinct ways. The first choice: a nationalist revolution, a continuation of the revolution in 1896. But even before we can use violence to change inequities in our society, we must first have a profound change in our way of thinking, in our culture. My regret about EDSA is that change would have been possible then with a minimum of bloodshed. In fact, a revolution may not be bloody at all if something like EDSA would present itself again. Or a dictator unlike Marcos.

The second is through education, perhaps a longer and more complex process. The only problem is that it may take so long and by the time conditions have changed, we may be back where we were, caught up with this tremendous population explosion which the Catholic Church exacerbates in its conformity with doctrinal purity. We are faced with a growing compulsion to violence, but even if the communists won, they will rule as badly because they will be hostage to the same obstructions in our culture, the barkada, (good buddy) the vaulting egos that sundered the revolution in 1896, the Huk revolt in 1949-53.

To repeat, neither education nor revolution can succeed if we do not internalize new attitudes, new ways of thinking. Let us go back to basics and remember those American slogans: A Ford in every garage. A chicken in every pot. Money is like fertilizer: to do any good it must be spread around. Some Filipinos, taunted wherever they are, are shamed to admit they are Filipinos. I have, myself, been embarrassed to explain, for instance, why Imelda, her children and the Marcos cronies are back, and in positions of power. Are there redeeming features in our country that we can be proud of? Of course, lots of them. When people say, for instance, that our corruption will never be banished, just remember that Arsenio Lacson as mayor of Manila and Ramon Magsaysay as president brought a clean government. We do not have the classical arts that brought Hinduism and Buddhism to continental and archipelagic Southeast Asia, but our artists have now ranged the world, showing what we have done with Western art forms, enriched with our own ethnic traditions. Our professionals, not just our domestics, are all over, showing how accomplished a people we are!

Look at our history. We are the first in Asia to rise against Western colonialism, the first to establish a republic. Recall the Battle of Tirad Pass and glory in the heroism of Gregorio del Pilar and the 48 Filipinos who died but stopped the Texas Rangers from capturing the president of that First Republic. Its equivalent in ancient history is the Battle of Thermopylae where the Spartans and their king Leonidas, died to a man, defending the pass against the invading Persians. Rizal — what nation on earth has produced a man like him? At 35, he was a novelist, a poet, an anthropologist, a sculptor, a medical doctor, a teacher and martyr. We are now 80 million and in another two decades we will pass the 100 million mark.

Eighty million — that is a mass market in any language, a mass market that should absorb our increased production in goods and services - a mass market which any entrepreneur can hope to exploit, like the proverbial oil for the lamps of China.

Japan was only 70 million when it had confidence enough and the wherewithal to challenge the United States and almost won. It is the same confidence that enabled Japan to flourish from the rubble of defeat in World War II.

I am not looking for a foreign power for us to challenge. But we have a real and insidious enemy that we must vanquish, and this enemy is worse than the intransigence of any foreign power. We are our own enemy. And we must have the courage, the will, to change ourselves.

Sounds like Baghdad

Think of Mayfair or Beverly Hills, except heavily gated and with lots of security guards. That's Alabang.

And yes I agree with the article. We do need a revolution.

Someone like Marcos, but without Imelda and the cronies.

Ah the Ayala Southvale. That's even a much, more expensive place.

Yes. Gated. But peaceful.

My wife spent a good few years of her life there.

Yes. There needs to be a redistribution of income.

Our Constitution and economy is patterned after the US.

Capitalism and democracy rules there and here.

But in the Philippines, it's flawed because of too much bureaucracy considering the size of our country.

For such a small country like ours, a sane man has to wonder why we are Bicameral. You have the Congress and the Senate. And they all have 'pork barrels/project investment allowances' when they should not. They are supposed to make and amend laws. Not have roads, buildings built.

Too many officials, too much drain on the coffers.