The Filipinos in the Middle East: Successes and tragedies

Our research shows that there are no less than 2.2 million Filipinos in the Middle East and North Africa. They comprise permanent and temporary residents and undocumented irregular migrants whose work visa has already expired but who chose to stay with the secret support of their employers who value them. A number of OFWs married locals and other foreign nationals, and others are former tourists who extended their stay by some creative ways. Our team of academics and researchers now in Israel are looking into this as part of our research.

We have Filipino contacts in Lebanon, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Oman, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Turkey, Kuwait, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Saudi Arabia. Having been assigned to Kuwait as Labor attaché from 2008 to 2011, this writer has some familiarity with the territory and some links with the Filipino communities. These are our sources of information aside from government and non-government institutions. Filipinos in Israel constitute one of the largest groups of migrant workers, no less than 50,000 out of a total of 300,000 foreign workers. They are noted for their hard work, creativity, and excellent interpersonal relations. They are good singers, artists, and are recognized as preferred caregivers and home service assistants. Most of them are concentrated in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba, Netanya, Rehovot, and Rishon Le Zion.

In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Filipinos are among the top three largest groups of foreign workers. The OFWs first arrived in Saudi in 1973. They were engineers who built the KSA highways and all the buildings in all the major cities of Jeddah, Riyadh, and Al Khobar. Today, the Arabian embassy in Manila is processing no less than a thousand work visas each day for OFWs. The height of labor migration to KSA was in 2008 when at one time there were no less than 300,000 job orders for Filipinos. The recruiters have been raking in a lot of money in the business of recruitment and deployment. But there were many tragic stories of OFWs being raped, murdered, falsely charged of crimes, or detained for immigration violations.

There are about 300,000 Filipinos in Kuwait, that tiny but oil-rich kingdom at the top of the Gulf. In 2016, Kuwait was the sixth largest destination for OFWs in the world. It is one of the richest sources of remittances. In one year alone, 2009, the remittances reached $110 million. I know the figures for that was when I was Labor attaché there. No less than 10 Filipino banks have correspondent accounts in Kuwait to facilitate the money transfers. I hosted the Land Bank president who went to Kuwait to market its services and she got a large chunk of the market, apart from Western Union and other financial institutions. More than 100,000 Filipino domestic helpers are in Kuwait. Most of them are doing well but a number of maids have suffered from maltreatment and other forms of social and economic injustices. I have filed cases against employers and criminal offenders in coordination with local authorities.

I think the happiest OFWs in the Middle East are those working in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. There are more than 700,000 Filipinos in the United Arab Emirates, and more than 450,000 of them are in Dubai. Most of them are engineers, nurses, restaurant and hotel employees, and even teachers. Only a small fraction are domestic helpers. A Filipino educator, Dr. Rommel Sergio, is a professor in the Canadian University Dubai. He is a respected leader of the Filipino community there and a founding director of the Psychological Association of the Philippines-UAE Chapter. He said Filipinos constitute no less than 21.3% of the total Dubai population. The OFWs there are in engineering, tourism, customer service, health and medical services, and marketing and advertising. Less than 10% are domestics.

I can write volumes of the OFWs’ stories. Most are happy but some are also tragic, which are better forgotten and set aside. The purpose of our research here is to look at the OFWs as a major contributor to the socio-economic and cultural development of our country. I have learned more about the Asian and Filipino psyche and the culture of Asians as compared to other races. The research materials I have gathered can help build a library of the struggles of our Filipino migrant workers. I love my job here and I am growing as a person and as a Filipino.