Objecting to the term "Filipino" being used to refer to nannies or personal care aides

I received the following email and received permission to post it anonymously. In Israel the term Filipino is widely used to refer to someone who is an aide or personal care-worker - because in fact most people employed in this capacity are from the Philippines. 

However I have not heard it used as a pejorative term but simply as a fact that when one needs help with an elderly parent, handicapped or retarded child as well as domestic help - one needs a fillipino.

However it clearly has irritated my correspondent - who does not want to get into an on line discussion. Do careworkers from the Phillipines resent the term "fillipino"? What would be the preferred alternative?

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs

The following is a list of ethnic slurs (ethnophaulisms) that are, or have been, used as insinuations or allegations about members of a given ethnicity or to refer to them in a derogatory (critical or disrespectful), pejorative (disapproving or contemptuous), or insulting manner in the English-speaking world. For the purposes of this list, an ethnic slur is a term designed to insult others on the basis of race, ethnicity, or nationality. Each term is listed followed by its country or region of usage, a definition, and a reference to that term.

However the complexity of the issue of the listing and usage of such terms needs to be noted. For instance, many of the terms listed below (such as "Gringo", "Yank", etc.) are used by large numbers of human beings in many parts of the world as part of their ordinary speech or thinking without any intention of causing offence, and with little or no evidence that such usage does in fact cause much or indeed any offence, while the implicit or explicit labeling of such large numbers of people as racists (or similar terms such as prejudiced, bigoted, ethnophobic, xenophobic, etc.), simply because they use some words on the list below, can itself be deeply unfair and insensitive and can thus cause deep offence.

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Hello,

I read your blog post about your twins this morning and feel for your situation.

That being said, I wanted to flag a section of your post referring to 'the Filipinos'. If your children's nannies are from the Philippines, does this one fact lead you to label them with contempt or indifference? Surely you would not want to be to referred to as 'the Jew' if someone left their child on their care? You may not have meant any offence to this, but of you replace 'the x' with any race, gender or religion, then you may realise you are subtly commenting on a group of people that are not at fault in your predicament.

Kind regards,