The Pinoy worker’s yellow brick road
March 13, 2006 | 12:00am
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had a positive take on the continuing diaspora of Filipino workers overseas: she said it was because good old Filipino skills and competence were very much in demand abroad. Indeed, Pinoy ingenuity, temperate character and singular determination to work abroad combine to offer a uniquely ideal global workhorse for many economically-progressive countries.
In fact, such appreciation is manifest in the sheer number of Filipinos who leave the country for work abroad: a million overseas Filipino workers get that much-coveted round-trip ticket to a work contract abroad every year. In 2005, the eight million overseas Filipino workers located in 140 countries remitted over $10 billion to the country’s economy. For a poor country, such as the Philippines, this amount is nothing to sneeze at.
Newsweek International calls this newfound source of revenue as a new form of foreign aid: "Some economists tout remittances as the developing world’s most reliable and broadly based source of financing – effectively a new form of foreign aid. Foreign direct investment is larger but tends to fluctuate with global economic swings. Indeed, remittances now dwarf the amount of official development assistance poor countries receive. Sometimes described as ‘globalization bottom up,’ these revenue streams, say migration advocates, help alleviate poverty, spur investment and cushion the impact of worldwide recession when private capital dries up."
The financial windfall of an overseas Pinoy worker can be seen in the new concrete houses being built in just about every barangay in the country, and the intolerable din of component stereos blasting music from the homes of repatriated OFWs. Not surprisingly, government has been quick to label them "the new Filipino hero," an aphorism that underscores the problems of abuse and persecution that they are likely to undergo during their sojourn abroad.
The manifold consequences of Filipino families broken up by overseas work is only now starting to earn much-needed attention, with psychological and emotional support offered to the members of the OFW families left behind. Technically, eight million households left either fatherless or motherless do not bode well for the psychological welfare of the next generation. But, such is the price to pay for a tiny bit of heaven on earth, or, at least, in our case, a decent plate of food on the table each day.
The Migration Policy Institute reports that Filipino males comprised the bulk of migrant workers until the early ’90s when the demand for Filipino female workers – mostly domestic helpers and female entertainers – shot up. While Indonesian, Sri Lankan and other Asian workers find work in Middle Eastern countries, it is, in fact, the Pinoy worker’s ability to blend in that they are found to be preferred in more countries around the globe.
The overseas Filipino worker has spawned quite a bit of modern-day mythology, what with movies, romance novels and TV soap operas spinning different perspectives on the OFW as tragic hero, the Pinoy superhero, jilted Romeo (or Juliet) – the works. It is said that the OFW experience is uniquely Pinoy, the Filipino migrant worker being claimed to be the modern-day version of the biblical wandering Jew. Wikipedia, the revolutionary on-line encyclopedia that threatens to make the once-authoritative Encyclopedia Britannica obsolete, lists Filipino overseas workers among the notable diasporas in world history, along with the Jewish and African diasporas.
Let us look at this phenomenon in perspective. A 2004 report by the International Labor Organization estimates about 175 million migrant workers worldwide (including about 25 percent of which are their families), and estimates place total migrant workers remittances in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Clearly, the migrant worker phenomenon is a significant form of global commerce. In Asia, the driving force behind this continuing output of manpower is grinding poverty, to which the Philippines is no stranger. Based on the value of remittances, the Philippines is the fifth largest after India, China, Mexico and France.
The Philippines’ National Statistics Office (NSO) identifies Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Central Luzon and Western Visayas as the top four areas with the largest contribution of OFWs. Take a trip to a remote barrio in the Ilocos or Bicol. Chances are you will find one or two brightly-painted new two-storey residence in the middle of a group of nipa huts and wooden houses; they’re most likely your OFW families. This migrant phenomenon is such a pervasive occurrence in the Filipino experience that, come to think of it, national policy and community traditions are influenced by it.
Sending money back home is a primordial concern of every OFW. Based on the 2002 NSO survey, about three in every 10 OFWs send remittances through informal channels. The $10 billion reported by formal channels, like banks and money transfer companies, would hit a higher level and fuel the Philippine economy even more if our unconverted OFW compatriots would be convinced to send their pera padala through formal remittance modes.
We’ve heard of numerous horror stories about hard-earned money by our OFWs coursed through the informal paki-padala system disappearing into thin air along with the friendship of and trust for co-workers and relatives, and fly-by-night remittance agents, who promise lower fees for money transfers. Our unknowing kababayans should realize that it is better to send through established channels rather than be worried about money getting lost in transition. Western Union, for example, can be found in areas where most OFWs are. It makes a remitter pay a reasonable service fee, but money dispatched is received in minutes after sending, which can be picked up in more than 5,000 agent locations nationwide. The sender may shell out some amount, but is assured of security, speed and convenience.
There are as many complementary issues that surround migrant workers, as there are workers willing to go. Filipino workers desperate for jobs abroad ignore advisories that warn them about the perils of working in Iraq. Some domestic helpers have been brutalized, and even murdered, by their employers. Filipino entertainers have been duped into working as prostitutes in brothels. And HIV/AIDS infection haunts many overseas workers who, perhaps, owing to extreme loneliness, succumb to the temptations of the flesh in foreign ports.
On the home front, children are growing up without the love and nurturing of a mother or a father. Conversely, they are being conditioned that a parent’s long-distance love is manifested in a new pair of imported rubber shoes or the latest videogame. Could this be the ultimate and bittersweet erosion of the family as a core unit of our society? What are the consequences to a married couple’s relationship, one spouse wrested from a home at an age where companionship, loneliness, love and, yes, sex, are important facets of a fulfilled and happy life?
When these eight million overseas workers do finally come home (and another eight million or more take their place), they will come home with a new perspective in life, from an overseas experience that may have exposed them to a better quality of life, a better system of government, better public service, and a more enlightened society. They may be bringing home a new consciousness that may help us shape a society less driven by self-serving values, but by a more humane and civilized way of thinking and mode of behavior.
Here we are, endlessly bickering over the need to overhaul our government, our politics, throwing an endless list of great ideas to make things right in a nation where right and wrong is a matter of a presidential proclamation; meanwhile, our overseas workers, wittingly or not, are learning and living the fundamentals of a better way of living by living in countries that may have something better to offer. When they come home, as surely as they are going to – whether, God forbid, in a plain wooden box or in first class – they will be bringing home lessons learned from years of hard work and a newfound sense of honor and dignity.
Ultimately, that perhaps will be the best and most effective way to communicate a new moral transformation – not from the pulpit of churches, nor from the rostrums in Malacañang nor in Congress, nor from the scholarly classrooms of our academic institutions, but from the grassroots. The great bulk of the OFWs represent the masa simply desiring to trod that yellow brick road and find their own small place in the sun.
E-mail bongo@vasia.com or bongo@campaignsandgrey.net for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.
In fact, such appreciation is manifest in the sheer number of Filipinos who leave the country for work abroad: a million overseas Filipino workers get that much-coveted round-trip ticket to a work contract abroad every year. In 2005, the eight million overseas Filipino workers located in 140 countries remitted over $10 billion to the country’s economy. For a poor country, such as the Philippines, this amount is nothing to sneeze at.
Newsweek International calls this newfound source of revenue as a new form of foreign aid: "Some economists tout remittances as the developing world’s most reliable and broadly based source of financing – effectively a new form of foreign aid. Foreign direct investment is larger but tends to fluctuate with global economic swings. Indeed, remittances now dwarf the amount of official development assistance poor countries receive. Sometimes described as ‘globalization bottom up,’ these revenue streams, say migration advocates, help alleviate poverty, spur investment and cushion the impact of worldwide recession when private capital dries up."
The financial windfall of an overseas Pinoy worker can be seen in the new concrete houses being built in just about every barangay in the country, and the intolerable din of component stereos blasting music from the homes of repatriated OFWs. Not surprisingly, government has been quick to label them "the new Filipino hero," an aphorism that underscores the problems of abuse and persecution that they are likely to undergo during their sojourn abroad.
The manifold consequences of Filipino families broken up by overseas work is only now starting to earn much-needed attention, with psychological and emotional support offered to the members of the OFW families left behind. Technically, eight million households left either fatherless or motherless do not bode well for the psychological welfare of the next generation. But, such is the price to pay for a tiny bit of heaven on earth, or, at least, in our case, a decent plate of food on the table each day.
The Migration Policy Institute reports that Filipino males comprised the bulk of migrant workers until the early ’90s when the demand for Filipino female workers – mostly domestic helpers and female entertainers – shot up. While Indonesian, Sri Lankan and other Asian workers find work in Middle Eastern countries, it is, in fact, the Pinoy worker’s ability to blend in that they are found to be preferred in more countries around the globe.
The overseas Filipino worker has spawned quite a bit of modern-day mythology, what with movies, romance novels and TV soap operas spinning different perspectives on the OFW as tragic hero, the Pinoy superhero, jilted Romeo (or Juliet) – the works. It is said that the OFW experience is uniquely Pinoy, the Filipino migrant worker being claimed to be the modern-day version of the biblical wandering Jew. Wikipedia, the revolutionary on-line encyclopedia that threatens to make the once-authoritative Encyclopedia Britannica obsolete, lists Filipino overseas workers among the notable diasporas in world history, along with the Jewish and African diasporas.
Let us look at this phenomenon in perspective. A 2004 report by the International Labor Organization estimates about 175 million migrant workers worldwide (including about 25 percent of which are their families), and estimates place total migrant workers remittances in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Clearly, the migrant worker phenomenon is a significant form of global commerce. In Asia, the driving force behind this continuing output of manpower is grinding poverty, to which the Philippines is no stranger. Based on the value of remittances, the Philippines is the fifth largest after India, China, Mexico and France.
The Philippines’ National Statistics Office (NSO) identifies Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Central Luzon and Western Visayas as the top four areas with the largest contribution of OFWs. Take a trip to a remote barrio in the Ilocos or Bicol. Chances are you will find one or two brightly-painted new two-storey residence in the middle of a group of nipa huts and wooden houses; they’re most likely your OFW families. This migrant phenomenon is such a pervasive occurrence in the Filipino experience that, come to think of it, national policy and community traditions are influenced by it.
Sending money back home is a primordial concern of every OFW. Based on the 2002 NSO survey, about three in every 10 OFWs send remittances through informal channels. The $10 billion reported by formal channels, like banks and money transfer companies, would hit a higher level and fuel the Philippine economy even more if our unconverted OFW compatriots would be convinced to send their pera padala through formal remittance modes.
We’ve heard of numerous horror stories about hard-earned money by our OFWs coursed through the informal paki-padala system disappearing into thin air along with the friendship of and trust for co-workers and relatives, and fly-by-night remittance agents, who promise lower fees for money transfers. Our unknowing kababayans should realize that it is better to send through established channels rather than be worried about money getting lost in transition. Western Union, for example, can be found in areas where most OFWs are. It makes a remitter pay a reasonable service fee, but money dispatched is received in minutes after sending, which can be picked up in more than 5,000 agent locations nationwide. The sender may shell out some amount, but is assured of security, speed and convenience.
There are as many complementary issues that surround migrant workers, as there are workers willing to go. Filipino workers desperate for jobs abroad ignore advisories that warn them about the perils of working in Iraq. Some domestic helpers have been brutalized, and even murdered, by their employers. Filipino entertainers have been duped into working as prostitutes in brothels. And HIV/AIDS infection haunts many overseas workers who, perhaps, owing to extreme loneliness, succumb to the temptations of the flesh in foreign ports.
On the home front, children are growing up without the love and nurturing of a mother or a father. Conversely, they are being conditioned that a parent’s long-distance love is manifested in a new pair of imported rubber shoes or the latest videogame. Could this be the ultimate and bittersweet erosion of the family as a core unit of our society? What are the consequences to a married couple’s relationship, one spouse wrested from a home at an age where companionship, loneliness, love and, yes, sex, are important facets of a fulfilled and happy life?
When these eight million overseas workers do finally come home (and another eight million or more take their place), they will come home with a new perspective in life, from an overseas experience that may have exposed them to a better quality of life, a better system of government, better public service, and a more enlightened society. They may be bringing home a new consciousness that may help us shape a society less driven by self-serving values, but by a more humane and civilized way of thinking and mode of behavior.
Here we are, endlessly bickering over the need to overhaul our government, our politics, throwing an endless list of great ideas to make things right in a nation where right and wrong is a matter of a presidential proclamation; meanwhile, our overseas workers, wittingly or not, are learning and living the fundamentals of a better way of living by living in countries that may have something better to offer. When they come home, as surely as they are going to – whether, God forbid, in a plain wooden box or in first class – they will be bringing home lessons learned from years of hard work and a newfound sense of honor and dignity.
Ultimately, that perhaps will be the best and most effective way to communicate a new moral transformation – not from the pulpit of churches, nor from the rostrums in Malacañang nor in Congress, nor from the scholarly classrooms of our academic institutions, but from the grassroots. The great bulk of the OFWs represent the masa simply desiring to trod that yellow brick road and find their own small place in the sun.
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