House to start debate on dual citizenship bill

The House of Representatives opens plenary debates this Tuesday on the sensitive measures to be known as the "Philippine Citizenship Retention Act of 2002" or the Dual Citizenship Act that both Senate President Franklin Drilon and House Speaker Jose de Venecia said will be passed by Congress this year.

The bill, which has drawn multi-partisan support, in effect will amend Commonwealth Act No. 63 by recognizing that expatriate Filipinos who have acquired the citizenship of their host countries did not mean "they had given up their country of birth."

Rep. Marcelino Libanan, chairman of the House Committee on Justice, said his committee is now ready to report out House Bill 4720 and will lead a battery of multi-partisan lawmakers including De Venecia who will sponsor the bill in plenary session.

Approval of the measure is also seen as vital in view of the proposed Absentee Voting Bill which De Venecia and Drilon have also promised to approve this year and which would enable some 7.5 overseas Filipinos to vote in national elections starting in 2004.

Overseas Filipinos are also regarded as an economic force and have much to contribute to economic development in the Philippines, especially in a world changed by globalization and by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A consolidation of ten separate but similar measures filed during the 12th Congress, the bill will be entitled: "An Act Recognizing the Retention of Philippine Citizenship for those to be Naturalized in a Foreign Country; Recognizing Dual Citizenship and for other purposes."

Quoting Section 2 of HB 4720, Libanan said: "The State values the dream and aspiration of every Filipino to continue to be recognized and given the rights as Filipino citizens. It recognizes that a change in the Filipino’s citizenship, oftentimes by reason of convenience or by force of circumstances principally to avail of benefits not available to non-citizens of a foreign country, does not mean the giving up of the Filipino’s country of birth or the uprooting of their most sentimental attachment to their motherland."