OFWs’ contributions to ‘Pinoy pride’
Constitutional reform, or charter change, has consistently been anathema to the Philippine social ethos for several reasons, generally summarized as being unpatriotic. Its proponents, especially those advocating for economic policy reasons, are considered out of touch with Filipino social reality—that Filipinos would rather work elsewhere than stay for essentially dirt-cheap wages here.
This raises the question if it is worth sending people abroad instead of making it enticing for them to work at home. Did the framers and supporters of the 1987 Constitution, who are blamed for making the conditions that gave birth to the modern overseas Filipino worker, foresee the importance of OFWs and their apparent contributions to national pride that the pro-charter change advocates failed to do?
It seems that the side effects of the OFW phenomenon—separated if not broken families, children lacking proper parental guidance, homesickness, etc.—were considered merely collateral damage in the quest to seemingly displace the local workforce of the countries where OFWs work. In other words, we should bear our families hating us for taking the jobs of other nationalities, because what is at stake is to ensure the global workforce is Filipino—and Filipino only.
By ensuring Filipinos as the global workforce, we can provide a platform for our cultural exports, as OFWs can introduce our assets to other countries, even if such introductions are not part of any official marketing strategy. We take, for example, the fact that OFWs take with them our cultural traits which may be alien to everyone else—but because of globalization, may be tolerated and hopefully even adopted and emulated elsewhere.
We do not wish to belittle the sacrifices of our OFWs, and lose our gratefulness for them, but we seem to be benefiting on the international cultural front in a way that suggests the negative side effects mentioned above should be shrugged off—if it simply means “Pinoy Pride.”
KENNETH CRUZ,
