While there is not much room for discussions on the immigration woes of Filipinos in the United States, the Philippines would ensure that they are sent back home and not to other countries.

Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez stated this as he reaffirmed that the country will continue to respect the laws of America in relation to illegal immigration.

He said while the country continues to cooperate with the United States on how to handle illegal immigration and that legal assistance for Filipinos is being offered by Filipino-American lawyers associations, "there is really not much room for discussion."

"I think at the end of the day, the laws of the United States must be respected, just like we expect citizens who come to the Philippines to also respect our laws," Romualdez said in a press briefing with the Philippine media delegation in Washington, D.C.

"The bottom line is there is really not much room for discussion, but to simply work in such a way that all Filipinos that are up for deportation will be deported to the Philippines and not to a third country, which I think it has already been agreed upon that any kind of deportation will be, as long as they're Filipino citizens, we will make sure that they are deported to the Philippines," the ambassador added.

According to Romualdez, there are a little less than 100,000 Filipinos that are up for deportation.

"[B]ut again, these are confidential matters of the Homeland Security of the immigration, US immigration. They only inform us about this when they see that it's important for the Philippine embassy to work with them on how we can repatriate these Filipinos," he said.

He added that a large number of Filipinos are concentrated in California.

"[S]o you can imagine that we probably may have quite a number of them in the West Coast. We do have some of them, of course, here in the East Coast. Generally, it's the concentration of Filipinos are in California," he said.