Migrants in the news

It is painful enough to bid goodbye to loved ones, to bear separation, to go abroad so that the family left behind will have a better life, assured food and funds for education and other needs.

If it is painful to read about the case of a fellow Filipino beheaded recently, one can only imagine the unbearable, indescribable pain that the affected families experience learning the tragic news about their own migrant family member.

Another kababayan is sadly awaiting the same verdict in Taiwan. The anguish of those awaiting the latest updates about detained migrant family members may not be as finally devastating but the pain, the anxiety, and hopeless feeling could just be as difficult to bear.

Can migrants all throughout the world be treated better, more humanely?

In the news this week is a global conference on migration and development to be held in Manila. The theme focuses on the empowerment and the better protection of migrants all throughout the world.

Representatives of government and civil society from all over the world will meet to discuss and interface about the issues related to migrants. Will the conference come up with definite steps that will address the real needs of migrants?

Migrants play very crucial roles for the present local and world economic and political system. Their work in host countries build roads, bridges, other infrastructures. Their taxes contribute to the host countries’ economies. Their consumer needs also allow for businesses, locally and globally, to prosper. How much of the banking, telecommunication, real estate businesses, among others, have profited from the migrants’ earnings? How many countries and how many people and families in their home countries have their remittances helped to survive through long continuing years?

And yet, despite their heroic local and global contributions, the migrants are remembered only when their remittances are active. Those who call them modern-day heroes stop at lip service. No concrete, protective and sustainable policies have really been drawn for them, locally and globally. Those in active service find themselves surrounded by those who wish to partake of their earnings, of their foreign currencies.

 But woe to those migrants who are out of job, are penniless, and worse, already advanced in age. For all their sacrifices and hard work in the past, many feel already forgotten even while they are still struggling to stay alive.

 Will the global conference in Manila result in positive steps for the migrants? Already, the DFA is saying no conclusive policy measures may come out of this conference.

 A number of us from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, have been elected to be part of the Philippine civil society representatives to this global conference. We have joined earlier meetings where we have assessed together the situation of migrants, the causes , the contexts and the consequences of migration. We have also together made suggestions, identified priority areas requiring concrete, immediate as well as sustainable doable solutions that can be raised during the forthcoming Global Conference on Migration and Development in Manila from October 27-29.

 Can this October global conference set the direction for the protection of migrants all throughout the world?

 We can only try and try once again. We will participate with full knowledge that discussions and such short engagements can never solve the migrants’ problems overnight. We will participate bringing with us the hope that there are those who will listen to our plea for more of us to re-assess the need to move this present world away from over-prioritization of the global economy and towards the prioritization of building a global home and a global community.

 For as long as migrants are considered, like goods, like commodities on the move within this present global economy, there is no chance for them who are treated as workers, as laborers, to be treated as full human beings. Only a world that welcomes and truly cares for full human beings, not just workers or laborers, can truly protect migrants locally and globally.

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