Based on your name, I know exactly who you are talking about. Great friend of mine now as well. Although he is an expat, he's on a local contract because he's technically Filipino. I believe the expat pilots he's referring to are those that are either full or half Filipino, just coming from other countries. Because they have at least one parent that is Filipino they can obtain dual citizenship and get a Philippine Passport. There are expat Captains on the ATR due to the shortage of local ATR Captains, but they are on different contracts than the locals, and as stated before they have to have so much PIC time on the ATR already. As far as I know there's only 2 foreigners (not holding Philippine passports) that are on the local contract and both are FO's. Me being one of them.