Still, four out of 10 Filipinos want to go abroad to earn dollars. It doesn’t matter if they’re to work as domestic helpers or GROs as the dollars they would earn is much greater than what a doctor earns thus enabling his family to buy a TV, stereo or a bungalow.
I have resolved long ago to make a difference through our Katipunan-USA Foundation (www.katipunan-usa.org). Overseas Filipinos (and that included me during my first l0 years in the US) must share the blame for being so blindly generous to our relatives back home by giving most of what they want and not what they really need to learn to be more self-sufficient. This is, by the way, in addition to the dollar remittances sent every year to the tune of $8 billion and chances are these hard-earned dollars were not invested to produce more goods and services, but rather spent on beer houses and useless merchandise made outside the Philippines.
In cities where large concentrations of Filipinos reside – like San Diego, Carson, Los Angeles, Daly City, Milpitas, Delano, Panorama City, National City (all in California), Chicago, Jersey City, New York, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, Washington DC – you will see prominent advertising of balikbayan box door-to-door companies. One executive told me that in one year Filipinos from the US and Canada alone send two million boxes to the Philippines. The amount being spent (again, not invested in the Philippine economy) is indeed staggering. Let’s just assume that even at an average of $60 per box for shipping and handling, that is already a huge $120 million plus the contents inside, say even at a very low value of $100 per box as the Fil-Ams buy them on sale or in the flea markets, that is another $200 million or a total of $320 million or approximately P17.6 billion in value sent to and consumed by their relatives in the Philippines. It’s a huge amount that could have financed infrastructure projects and used as capital improvement instead of just spent on consumer goods manufactured in other countries and consumed in the Philippines. In the final analysis, this kind of help is a negative help as it perpetuates dependency and a handout mentality.
I challenge all Filipinos in the US and Canada to cut these balikbayan boxes s by half and instead send the value of the other half in other more lasting kinds of help such as agricultural tools or mechanized tools for farming or to engage in any kind of trade – how-to books, business and entrepreneurial books as well as capital equipment with adequate instruction from which recipients must learn how to fish for their own daily sustenance. We must stop giving handouts and start teaching Filipinos how to fish, and challenge them to become independent, as we are in America.
Our dollar remittances to relatives must also be with more specific guidelines such as money to be used to pay or subsidize tuition fees for high school or college-bound relatives, capitalize some cottage or entrepreneurial businesses and not just to buy things for plain consumption until the next month’s doleouts.
Filipinos in America often forget that spoiling their relatives is the surest way to continue the handout cycle. In America, the government has social programs to assist poor people to get off welfare and eventually work for a living.
As a Filipino who still cares for his homeland, one must ask the question "Is there a better way to help?" I predict that in the next 10 years balikbayan box doleouts and dollar remittances will definitely dramatically decrease.
Let me tell you why:
The first-degree immigrants who came to America 25-40 years ago are now getting ready to retire and they will have less disposable income to spare. Their own children who have almost no affinity or the same degree of love or concern for their extended families will not be as giving as their own parents. They are derisively called the "Lost Filipino American," they are not pure Filipinos neither are they Americans. This internal conflict has caused higher suicide rates compared to the mainstream youth; it is an invisible but a deep internal problem that afflicts many Filipino families in America.
Life in the US, post 9-11, is forever changed. The ever-cautious Home Land Security Agency of the Department of Justice has made life for everyone more complicated. This scenario is even worse for non-Americans. Deportations, including Filipinos, are happening more frequently and in greater numbers. America will become more protective of its shores and will not really give a damn how other nations think especially under a Republican administration.
While these things are happening, the third-world countries always end up with the crumbs of the powerful. In the only game that matters now, globalization is making the poor poorer and the rich richer. The so-called parity rights or equal playing field is only good in theory. Pragmatically, he who produces more markets more products, profits more and therefore controls the world’s economy. The lowly workers in the assembly line who just add a puny part of the finished product always lose in the end game. A crude but painful analogy: the Philippines exports bamboo that also depletes its forests at a very low price to Japan and this same bamboo will come back as finished products like imported paper and toothpicks! Just compute the amount the Philippines receives for the raw bamboo and the price he pays for the finished products, then multiply that scenario in the raw materials that we export.
In a globalized economy, a country like the Philippines cannot compete. The exodus of millions of Filipinos to provide cheaper labor to those countries that have the wealth to hire people to do their backbreaking jobs will continue. However, there will be many poor countries competing for the same job, so wages will not increase but probably even go down. Due to lack of opportunities in the Philippines, Filipinos will continue to take risks anywhere in the world as they would prefer to live abroad and support a growing family with all the concomitant problems and social costs that are now rearing their ugly heads.
But the ever patient Filipinos can do almost anything. They will become yaya and katulong just to survive and provide food and a better future for their families. Occasionally I see them and feel their quiet cries of desperation, the sad mumbling in their hearts as they are away from their families. These missed opportunities of sharing with and nurturing their families have monumental costs that are hard to quantify in dollars or dinars. Each Filipino expatriate will answer his own questions in his own terms. And as a parent to two wonderful children, this is where my heart bleeds most.