Real state of the nation

If one or two Filipinos want to migrate, that is their personal issue, to borrow the view of American sociologist Charles Wright Mills.

However, if millions of Filipinos want to leave the Philippines today, then this is a serious social issue. What is it that makes our people want to leave their country, their homes and families immediately?

Pulse Asia presented their latest survey findings that three out of 10 Filipino adults will migrate today if possible. That will be about 14 million more to be added to the six to eight million Filipinos who are already out as migrants to various parts of the world, including war-torn areas like Lebanon.

Would so many millions of Filipinos want to migrate today if they share the same state of the nation assessment of GMA and her allies?

If life in the Philippines is as good as this administration wants to picture it, if families are content about their living situation and are happy to be with each other rather than be apart, if the future of Filipinos as well as their present job and welfare needs are stably met and responded to within this country, would there be millions who will want to leave this country today?

If this administration were truly responsive to the needs of the Filipino people, why do more Filipinos confirm more hopelessness this time?

One does not really have to see the results of surveys to find out the real state of this nation. One merely has to open one's eyes to see the face of poverty and neglect before and surrounding them. In the case of millions, they merely have to look at themselves or rather, this administration merely has to stop pretending that the number of poor during their term has decreased and that life has improved for millions during their reign.

Not only the poor want to migrate. Professionals, especially those in the medical field, want to work elsewhere and not stay to take care of the sick, the needy among their kababayans. Why? Because their own families are their priorities and they want to tend to their own needs first, before tending to the needs of others unrelated to them, except by race and nationality. Even activists may also wish to migrate now, in the midst of the political and military persecution leveled against them by this administration.

What is clear about the information that millions of Filipino adults wish to leave today is that this is certainly not the country they wish to stay in, to live in, to work in, for now. That is the clearest, most truthful declaration of the real state of this nation.

If this administration will again doubt or refute these statistics, then perhaps the case of our migrants in Lebanon should open their eyes wider to the truthful reality why Filipinos who are in the Philippines will risk going even to war-torn countries or why Filipinos, already threatened by bullets and bombs, prefer to hide and stay even in the midst of ongoing war.

If they stay in this country, they are at war with survival, they and their families. If they leave for or stay in war-torn countries, again, they find themselves caught in real military war involving their host country and another.

Although they may be at war in Lebanon, many of them are consoled by the idea that the rest of their families back home are safe. For as long as the migrants are the only ones at risk, they can afford any risk for the sake of their loved ones back home.

Either way, the millions of migrants who have left this country as well as the millions more who want to leave this country today mirror the real state of this nation. Those who are busy with Cha-cha and with dreams for the future but have no real plans or sentiments for the Filipino people today, especially the millions in need may wish to recognize the truth as mirrored for them by the migrants.

Those who feel confused about the political stalemate situation in this country, who feel that the rule of numbers seem to outweigh the rule of truth and justice ought to be reminded that so far, no administration has lived on forever in this country's history or elsewhere throughout the world.

Those who are asking what can be done now in the midst of so much hopelessness, despair and poverty may wish to start simply by addressing where they can, how they can contribute, in their own simple way, given their own meager resources, to making life better for themselves and their immediate neighbors. If we can start with the simple task of helping one other Filipino, aside from ourselves, have food enough for each day, then hunger will be resolved, food production can be improved, jobs can be created, equitable, regular salaries can be sustained, then happier, more content Filipinos will not wish to migrate anymore and more will want to stay proudly in this country that they can then call their very own.

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