The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) confirmed Tuesday that the US Central Command in Iraq has started to send home thousands of illegal overseas Filipino workers.

OWWA Administrator Carmelita Dimzon said in a television interview that Filipino workers will be sent back to the country at the expense of their American contractors before August 9.

Dimzon said that no sanctions will be imposed on the undocumented Filipino workers upon their return; a job assistance and social integration program will be extended to them instead.

The expatriation order was issued after the US military department discovered workers from countries with travel ban in Iraq, like the Philippines and Nepal, were being abandoned by their American contractors.

Filipino laborers have been banned from working in Iraq since 2005 after the frequent incidence of skirmishes between American forces and Iraqi rebels.

According to reports, Filipino workers were able to circumvent the ban by applying at American recruitment agencies in Middle East countries like Jordan, and Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, which have no travel ban.

Meanwhile, the labor sector felt left out during President Aquino’s first State-of-the-Nation Address (SoNA) delivered Monday before the joint session of the 15th Congress at the Batasang Pambansa in Quezon City.

While Aquino briefly referred to the labor sector while discussing his administration’s policy on streamlining the approval of business permits to stimulate job growth, the labor sector said he failed to tackle their main concerns, particularly the growing unemployment rate in the country and the rampant labor outsourcing by some companies.