By NIKKA CORSINO & ANNIE RUTH C. SABANGAN, GMANews.TV
02/23/2010 | 06:06 PM

They may have brought home the bacon – $17 billion in 2009 or over 10 times bigger than last year's expected foreign direct investment – but more than an economic force, overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have evolved into a social phenomenon that the country’s next president needs to resolve decisively.

The Filipino diaspora has fostered a “culture of migration," Professor Mary Lou Alcid of the University of the Philippines’ College of Social Work and Community Development said in a campus forum in early February. This has resulted in “transnational Filipino families" with the father in Saudi Arabia, the mother in Hongkong, the daughter in Taiwan, the brother in Dubai, and the youngest left in the Philippines, she added.

www.gmanews.tv/story/184592/ofw-problem-...e-for-next-president