Thank you, Chair.
I want to come back to something the parliamentary secretary mentioned, about the possibility of a legal remedy in the Philippines. I want to quote from a letter from Loretta Ann Rosales, a representative in the Philippines Parliament, who wrote to Andrew Robb, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs in Australia, on September 10 of this year. In her letter, Ms. Rosales addresses exactly that issue:
You may be aware that two proposed measures were filed before the Justice Committee of the Philippine House of Representatives during the 12th Congress.... Both bills sought the granting of permanent residency to the remaining stateless Vietnamese in the Philippines. Similarly, a bill was introduced by Congressman Roilo Golez in 1998 concerning permanent residency for the stateless Vietnamese.
As you would no doubt appreciate, enactment of a law is not a simple process. Bills such as the permanent residency bills take an average of nine years to pass through the various readings and procedures and then finally take effect as law in the Philippines. The bills granting permanent residency for the stateless Vietnamese in the Philippines were, sad to say, not passed into law.
So that's an update, perhaps, on the information that the parliamentary secretary had here. It doesn't look like that option is in process right now, or if it is, it's a very long-term process.