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BC man’s mission to become a Filipino
The Canadian Government is estimating that Filipino immigrants to Canada will reach the one million mark by 2025, a top Canadian official said.
“The number of Filipinos migrating to Canada has picked up in the last five years. We estimate that there will be a million Filipinos migrating to Canada by 2025,” said Canadian Ambassador to the Philippines Neil Reeder at the recent opening of the Canada Trade Fair at the Ayala Center Cebu.
“Both countries enjoy very important people-to-people linkages, built up over decades of immigration, travel and study,” Reed said in a press conference.
Apparently, he said, Canada continues to be an important destination for Filipinos wishing to immigrate and live in Canada permanently, work on a temporary basis or to study.
“In fact, ours is the second busiest Canadian visa office in the world,” Reed shared.
Citing official records, he said that as of 2012, the Canadian Embassy has issued permanent resident visas to nearly 33,000 Filipinos, over 8, 000 temporary foreign worker visas, and over 31,000 temporary resident or visitor visas.
He said an estimated 800,000 Canadians are of Filipino origin and Tagalog is the fastest-growing language group in Canada.
A bigger concentration of Filipino immigrants reside in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Montreal.
Last March 6, the Canadian Embassy announced an additional 40 more job categories under the Nova Scotia Provincial Nominee Program (NSPNP). This, on top of 24 job categories already prioritized under the Federal Skilled Occupancy (FSO) program.
On the flip, B.C. native Kyle Douglas Jennermann, 26 of Comox, is building a to-do list that, when fulfilled, he hopes would make him become something he is not quite just yet—a Filipino.
The list, posted in his blog www.becomingfilipino.
com, is open-ended. Anybody, Filipinos here or abroad, can make suggestions and add to the list, Jennermann says.
“Think of things, experiences, anything that makes you Filipino,” Jennermann writes in his blog. “I will collect all the different ideas,” he says, “then the journey begins.”
Launched in mid-February, the list is growing and Jennermann says he is slowly, day in and day out, ticking things off the list. He has gotten a local name, too, after a friend pointed to him and said “Kulas.”
A scooter bought from a Filipino friend has taken him to places in Mindanao deemed “unsafe” for tourists.
The list, too, has brought him closer to seeing everyday people living everyday lives.
“I have never experienced a culture like the Philippines’,” he says, “a culture that goes through a lot of really tough times and suffering but still shares a great big smile.”
Jennermann first came to the Philippines with four friends in January last year. He had been working in Hong Kong for an outdoor adventure company, which runs camps for children with special needs. The firm has Filipino members in its staff.
Jennermann says he had no Filipino friends in Canada and he got intrigued by how his Filipino colleagues shared everything, from chores to food to beers.
“They were a hardworking bunch, yet they always seemed to be so happy,” he says.
Jennermann says he had already planned a trip to Southeast Asia with friends but decided to swing to the Philippines after being invited by his Filipino coworkers, according to the Manila Bulletin.
“We arrived in Cebu at about 2 in the morning,” he relates. “I was a little anxious, none of us had ever been to the Philippines and I had persuaded some friends to come with me.”
In that first visit, Jennermann stayed for three weeks, traveling around the cities of Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, Davao and Quezon. He came back in July of last year, after working to finance his wanderlust, to see what it’s like to travel around by himself.
Having loved the outdoors since his days growing up in Comox, Jennerman says what made him love the Philippines is the natural beauty of its environment—its beaches, waterfalls, mountains and rivers.
He says he has also come to love the culture where strangers are treated like friends and everybody is family.
He was working in Hong Kong in November 2013 when Super Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) struck, devastating Tacloban City and other parts of the Visayas.
“I was with Filipinos at that time in Hong Kong and seeing the way it affected them, I just wanted to do something,” he says.
He decided to quit his job and flew to Cagayan de Oro where he ended up packing relief at a Red Cross station. Soon after, he ended up in Tacloban about two weeks after the typhoon on a relief mission and also to look up a Hong Kong colleague who was from there.
Together with his Filipino friends from the outdoor community, Jennermann put up OneTacloban to help out in the relief efforts with no “red tape, no politics, no bulls—.”
With his camera, Jennermann started documenting the damage. Afterwards, he would sit outside the United Nations tents—the only places then with Internet signal—and upload his videos on YouTube so friends and family could see how desperately help was needed.
OneTacloban was able to raise some P500,000 in donations, which helped in reopening a school for children, setting up clinics and procuring relief.
Jennermann says this is what his personal project, Becoming Filipino, is all about. He says the different aspects of Filipino culture—always looking out for friends and family, the capacity to live incredibly hard lives yet never losing sight of the positives, these are what he finds special.
For now, his greatest fear is being asked to leave. He has twice applied for visa extensions but at about P7,000 per application, these have gotten to be a drain on his resources. Becoming Filipino, in a way, presents a practical solution because if he were to become one then he would legally be able to find work and support himself.
“I looked it up,” he says, referring to the official process of how to apply for Filipino citizenship.
“I need to do business here but I have no money. Or I need to find a Filipino wife. But I have no girlfriend so that won’t work out,” he adds.
“Comox is where I’m from, but Cagayan de Oro is my home now,” he says.
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