Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures at supporters after speaking as he holds hands with former US First Lady Melania Trump during an election night event at the West Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, early on November 6, 2024. Jim Watson, AFP

MANILA — United States President-elect Donald Trump is making a historic comeback to the White House after promising to tighten borders and implement mass deportation of illegal immigrants.

Before this happens, Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez advised the 250,000 to 300,000 illegal Filipino immigrants in the United States to leave voluntarily to avoid being blacklisted.

“Some of them have already filed and so therefore they are here in limbo, meaning to say they are waiting for their papers to pass through. My advice to many of our fellowmen who are actually still here but cannot get any kind of status, my advice is for them not to wait to be deported,” Romualdez said in a forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) on Friday.

“I can see that the administration of President Trump is really going to be very strict with the immigration policy that he intends to put in place because that is a promise he made to the American public, and that is probably the reason why he won, an issue that is very important to a large number of Americans,” he added.

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Addressing illegal immigrants, the ambassador added, “My advice to them is to immediately leave voluntarily because once you are deported you can never come back to the United States. At least if you leave, there is always an opportunity or a chance that you will be able to file and just follow the rules and regulations of the country.”

Romualdez said the deportation would be a “big operation” and Trump would likely be able to implement a new immigration law given that Republicans control both the House and the Senate.

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Romualdez said illegal immigrants might be one of the reasons why most Filipino-Americans chose Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Even if they are kababayans, why can they stay here illegally when we went through the mill, meaning to say we went through the process,” Romualdez said.

“A lot of them resent the idea that people can just come in here and just be able to go through, as if they didn’t go through the difficulty of filing for being a permanent resident. At least this is what I hear from some of the Philippine-American communities that I’ve spoken with.”

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Romualdez said Trump was able to connect illegal immigration to bringing down inflation prices.

He also attributed Fil-Am support to Trump to the conservative values of Filipinos. Older Filipino immigrants, who are mostly Catholic, preferred what Republicans espoused such as strict abortion rules, according to Romualdez.

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“Whatever they threw his (Trump’s) way, they still believe that he was the best person to lead the United States,” Romualdez said.

He said illegal immigrants could seek advice from an attaché from the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW).

Once deported, Romualdez said there was a 99 percent chance that a person cannot come back to the US.

Despite tighter immigration rules under the Trump presidency, Romualdez said he believed nurses would be an exception since they are in demand and appreciated by Americans.

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