Seafaring People, Overseas Toilers
WHEN the Philippine government, under President Fidel V. Ramos, enacted Republic Act 8042 also known as the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995, the term "Overseas Filipino Worker" or OFW sounded like a typical socioeconomic imperative. Filipinos embraced as a cultural obligatory. Cold as gut-level pragmatic as you can get. Historical precedence attests to the evolving fact. Filipino migrants were already working outside the archipelago as early as the 1900s or maybe even before Spanish colonization commenced in mid-14th century.
However, it was only around the time following the end of the Spanish-American War and the ensuing handover of the Philippines to the United States by Spain as per Treaty of Paris that year that the long road of overseas toil for Filipinos was ushered. Farmworkers were deployed to Hawaii to serve labor needs in the U.S. territory's agriculture, then onto the mainland. Filipinos worked in hotels, restaurants, and sawmills, as well as in railroad construction and plantations in California and the canning industry in Alaska. Of course, they also served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
From
that point, the exodus of Filipinos abroad carried on, nonstop. From America to
Europe, back to neighboring Asian countries. When oil diggings started to
thrive in the Middle East, Filipino workers and professionals also began to be
recruited by multinational companies in the Gulf—in the same way that nurses
were in high demand. From 7,000 Filipino nurses in 1948, the number massively
increased to 57,000 in 1953. With such demand and opportunity to go to America,
nursing schools in the Philippines ballooned rapidly.
Fast
forward.
As
per Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 the sendoff seemed unrelenting. That’d be
besides the fact that when Corazon Aquino promised a million jobs as part of
economic recovery, post-Ferdinand Marcos regime, in late 1980s, those
employments were actually located in the Middle East. Washington’s USAID, plus
IMF/World Bank and other economic aid and financial grants from mostly European
institutions, arrived but seemingly not enough to distract the Filipino’s
focused fascination with the sparkling enticement of “dollars/rials earned”
abroad.
The Middle East and Elsewhere
FROM the first
Filipino arrivals of a few thousands in the Middle East in the 1970s, mainly
processed by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration under Marcos'
labor policy, the number skyrocketed to over 8 million in the 1990s. By 2010s,
almost 50 percent of all OFWs are concentrated in the Middle East, mostly in
Saudi Arabia. However, in the last 5 years or so, numbers fell. After years of
continuous growth, the deployment of Filipino workers to the Gulf went down by
9 to 10 percent in 2017; tally dwindled to 2.2 million or 22.4 percent of the
total remittance-sending workers overseas.
Several reasons attribute to the outflow. Significant economic changes in the MidEast region swung with regional political power change-ups while oil sheiks diversify from merely petroleum export reliance. But that doesn’t mean the OFW was coming home for good. With bleaker prospects for skilled Filipinos in the Middle East, these workers are now looking at other countries that are short of skilled professionals, like Japan, South Korea, and China.
For
example, as per part of the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement
signed at the time of President Gloria Arroyo in 2006, some 2,200 nurses and
caregivers flew to Japan to help take care of the
country’s ageing population. Then more farmers, construction workers,
shipbuilders and professionals in the hospitality sector followed to serve in
various industries in the ensuing years.
That
time, OFWs were still flying to other MidEast countries which needed more IT
technicians, computer engineers, doctors and nurses. Similarly, the Chinese
education sector also announced vacancies for 100,000 Filipino teachers to
teach English in the mainland.
Hence while OFW is often used to refer to Filipino migrant workers who reside
in another country for a limited period of employment, the phenomenon evolved
into a cultural fact. Latest modest data infer/s that there are over 10 million
Filipinos working abroad, making the Philippines "one of the biggest
export countries of labor.”
Reliance on Remittances
FACT is, despite a
huge cut in OFWs in the Middle East and North Africa, personal remittances from
overseas Filipino workers per se remained steady owing to Filipinos’ incessant
search for employment alternatives beyond the Gulf. Money sent from overseas
reached a record high of $33.5 billion in 2019, 3.9 percent higher than the $32.2
billion recorded in 2018, when OFW remittances accounted for 11 percent of the
total GDP. Clearly, the Philippines is one of the top 5 economies in the world
that benefit the most from remittances.
Such a fact easily affects how leadership deals with regional/global trade negotiations and internal financial/economic management. Either the government got complacent with management what it has home-based or administration sunk deeper to a kind of inertia of waiting for foreign, and of course, OFW remittances. The end justifies the means. Homes got empty of parenting intimacy and families sunk to dysfunction. But the emotional vacuum was largely unnoticed or ignored in favor of economic windfall.
Philippine
economy actually improved from Marcos’ last years, when GDP growth posted -7
percent as the dictatorship started to crumble in 1985. From 3.4 percent as
Cory Aquino sat in 1986 it was a huge 11 percent in 2000, in Joseph Estrada’s
term. In fact, it was a competitive 6 percent in 2019 irrelevant of President
Rodrigo Duterte’s PR flak and human rights record.
Then Covid-19
pandemic hit. As expected, growth plummeted to
-8.3 percent in 2020.
Aid, Dole-outs, and Complacency
MEANTIME, as Covid-19 continues its crawl of horror in the archipelago, with the Philippines lodged in an ignominious spot as #2 hardest-hit nation in Southeast Asia, with 5-figure cases each day, Filipinos ask: Have we saved for rainy rains? After all the islands could be the most disaster-prone geography in the East. Where is calamity preparedness or crisis management? People are both confounded, irked, or lost.
And
so we point our fingers at stewardship in relation to/with the Philippines two
benefactors, the United States and China. In September last year, pre-U.S.
election in November, (ex-President) Donald Trump’s White House and the Duterte
government signed a new 5-year $675 aid package. In the last 20 years or from
the onset of the new millennia, the U.S. has forwarded a total assistance of
$4.5 billion. In 2018, Beijing pledged a $24 billion in development aid,
delivery of which is still a huge puzzle.
Given
steady foreign investments and development aid plus a relatively healthy
economy, the Philippines can actually improve infrastructure for more local
jobs. Yet the attraction of remittances stay loud as “dole-out” mentality
reigns as ever. Truth from a fact. As unemployment rate soars to 17.7 percent
from 2019’s 2.15 percent, the pandemic is largely seen as sturdier rationale to
head out than stay put and languish in lockdown funk.
True,
President Duterte announced early this year that in 2021 the Philippines would
limit the annual number of health professionals (including nurses) it sends
abroad to 5,000, from about 13,000 that currently leave every year. How would
that play up when medical/healthcare demands have spiked globally due to the
obvious?
Promises, Pragmatism, Payroll
SO we are back where we came in—striding out. The psychological impact of absent parentage in the Philippines has been pushed to the background in favor of economic survival. But are Filipinos “surviving,” really? Despite the huge number of OFWs in the Middle East and elsewhere, most Filipinos, over 4 million are in the United States. Journeying home requires a whole lot of rethinking or a redo of Filipino consciousness inwards. But no matter how Filipinos entertain the emptiness of missing home and attempt to fix it, if leadership stays mired in mixed up scruples (sic) and priorities remain distant from sustainable development as it wrestles with governance morality, where to?
Meanwhile,
the Filipino has got to contend with the pandemic and loss of income. For now.
Which ironically finds salvation from relatives abroad. Remittances. Hence the
long road home gets longer for the Filipino Overseas Worker. But there is
always hope. The Philippines is never short of homegrown resources: World’s #2
producer of pineapple and #3 producer of banana + capability in manufacturing,
mining/mineral processing and global competitiveness in pharmaceuticals, shipbuilding,
electronics, and semi-conductors. With influx of foreign investment, there is
no reason why Filipinos should instead go-national and lessen the seafaring
passion.
The Philippines drawback, as ever, is leadership—which could be fixed in next year’s presidential election. The Filipino is still lost in a journey of unending promises, acquired pragmatism, and better payroll—but there is always a way to recourse a direction home. And this could start in 2022.
