For the record, it was then Foreign Affairs Minister (Secretary) Raul Manlapus who first talked about "Reverse Foreign Aid" when he addressed the Foreign Relations Council of Los Angeles, California, in August 1988 (1-9-8-8).

Then MFA Minister Manglapus said that the "foreign aid" of the Philippines to the United States consisted of educating and training the more-than 500,000 Filipino nurses, the 17,000 Filipino physicians and the thousands more of Filipino medical professionals (such as dentists, pharmacists, medical technicians, radiologists, dietitians, healthcare workers, etc.) who were then working in the American hospital and healthcare industries.

Mr. Manglapus said that it would have cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars in college loan funds, building more university infrastructures and other expenses of subsidizing state universities and/or community colleges -- had all of these Filipino medical professionals studied and trained in the United States.

In 2003 (2-0-0-3), I wrote an essay about "reinventing" the Filipino psyche. I said that the Philippine President and other national leaders should not come to the United States carrying literally the "begging bowl." I said that the Filipino national leaders should instead remind the United States that the more-than 3.0-million Filipino workers and American citizens of Filipino descent earn collectively more than $40-billion (spelled with a B) per annum. Approximately one-third of the Filipino-American household income of $40-plus billion goes to the U.S. federal, state, county and city governments in form of taxes.

In short, Filipino Americans pay an estimated $13.33-billion (spelled with a B) per year. The tens of billions represented, therefore, an indirect economic aid from the Philippines to the United States federal and local governments. And the actual military and economic aid that the United States sends to the Philippines does not exceed $200-million (spelled with an M) per year. (Last year, 2006, the combined military and economic aid of the U.S. to the Philippines amounted only to $170-million.) I said that the Philippines should stop receiving surplus American military equipment from helicopters to jet fighters.

I wrote that the Philippines would earn more respect from the military-industrial complex of the United States if it ordered brand-new destroyers or frigates and patrol boats and helicopters and pay for them using proceeds from counter-trade. We should stop begging for old moth-balled World War II-era American naval vessels, Vietnam-era Huey helicopters as part of the military aid.

In short what I said in 2003 is that we should move to "reinvent" the Philippine-United States relations, the Philippine lobby in Washington (DC), the bilateral ties and treaties, so as to demand more American funding for the environmental clean-up of the former U.S. military bases in the Philippines and joint ventures in fighting global warming, as the American consumers and industries are the biggest contributors to climate change and other issues such as debt relief.

In the matter of foreign loans, the American financial institutions and contractors benefited much from selling (on credit) to the Philippines graft-ridden supplies, machineries and technology such as the Westinghouse nuclear reactor plant in Bataan, etc., and etc. # # #

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