Perhaps 30 years ago, no one could imagine that our entire nation would be so completely and systemically dependent on money remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) for its sustenance and for its supply of hard currency. That is why it is significant that the Second Global Forum on Migration and Development is being hosted in Manila, where apparently the government believes that migration is development, that to escape poverty one must escape from his country?and worse, that its citizens agree wholeheartedly.
It is also significant that no less than the United Nations secretary general has lent his presence to the forum. His backing should highlight the campaign to ratify the Convention for the Protection of Migrant Workers.
This convention is unique. It may have earned the support of the sending states, but what it really needs is the ratification by the countries of destination. In other words, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka may grandly declare that migrants have rights, but who cares? (Legally, though, their support does help to ?crystallize? migrants? rights into binding customary law, but at the earliest that will benefit the next generation of OFWs, and God forbid that we still remain hostage to OFW remittances that far along into the future!) What will ultimately make a difference is when destination countries like Singapore (host state to Flor Contemplacion), the United Arab Emirates (host state to Sarah Balabagan) and, come to think of it, South Korea (home state of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon) affirm migrants? rights as well.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has advised the nation that henceforth we should refer to our migrant workers as ?expatriates? and not as OFWs. Typically they both labor under fixed-term foreign contracts, do not enjoy permanent residence where they work, and are bound to return home when their employment ends. Indeed, where lies the difference? By and large, the only real distinction is economics, e.g., the size of the paycheck, and the social status that comes with being higher in the totem pole. From the standpoint of the country of origin (in this case, the Philippines), the distinction is purely social and typically hierarchical, and Filipino expatriate professionals often escape the mass of regulations that apply to OFWs.
But perhaps the real distinction is from the standpoint of the host state, which can have different visa categories that formalize the social hierarchy and allow the migrant worker the ultimate privilege of being united with his or her family?and deny that privilege to the ordinary OFW.
This problem of family unification is by no means new. For Filipino migrant workers, starting with the original Hawaii banana plantation workers up to today?s domestic helpers, there have been legal impediments that barred their families from joining them. The separation of families is the true social cost of migrant labor. Worse, until recently, it was largely an invisible cost, because it was internalized and absorbed by displaced parents and orphaned children, who bore the loneliness and separation privately.
On the other hand, there is actually one problem in which expatriate and OFW alike should find common cause: discrimination on the basis of race, nationality or national origin. Snooty Filipinos tend to carry abroad their deeply ingrained snobbery and continue to distinguish themselves from Filipinos employed, say, as domestic servants. I have news for you, Dońa Victorina. Even your accent sounds pidgin to the foreign ear, the patois of the eternally trying-hard. To the people in the host countries, we all look and sound alike. They can?t tell the difference; we all are lumped together under the same racial stereotypes. For your own sake, embrace your own because the foreigners never will.
I agree with the UN secretary general when he said that if we ?needlessly constrain [the] legal means for migration, [it] will flow through unsafe and irregular channels.? I hope too that he was speaking to both the sending and receiving states. The Philippine government must streamline and limit OFW regulations narrowly for the sole purpose of protecting OFWs from illegal recruiters at home and, abroad, from predatory agencies, inhumane employers and repressive host states.
But receiving states must heed him as well. Notice that countries of destination treat the protection of migrant workers as an issue not of labor protection but of immigration. The irony is that their economies need migrant workers, who perform labor that their own market demands. Otherwise, why hire from abroad?
Whenever these wealthy states speak of a globalized economy, they speak so grandly about the mobility of capital and the free, borderless trade of goods. Then suddenly when we speak about the mobility of labor, they suddenly invoke the language of immigration. In other words, international law has been mobilized to tear down national barriers to the movement of capital and trade, but not the walls that guard against the movement of labor.
Sure, immigration rules are needed because the influx of foreigners destabilizes local communities. But host countries have, in the past, deliberately assumed that risk when, say, they welcomed the refugee diaspora from Indochina in the mid-1970s. Why? Because it was a social cost they were willing to pay to right the injustices borne by the refugees.
There are similar social costs to the OFW diaspora. Why should the Filipino worker bear that cost alone? Why shouldn?t the state of destination, the host state, willingly share in the erstwhile invisible costs of a service from which they benefit?
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