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Despite Risks, Overseas Jobs Continue to Lure Filipinos
FILIPINO groups supporting immigrants have asked the Philippine government to work out measures with host countries to protect OFWs from abuse and to discourage illegal deployment. The Scalabrini Migration Center recommends that efforts to curb unauthorized immigration in the sending country should be matched with policies in host countries, because both the strong demand for exported labor and the home agencies that facilitate deployment perpetuate unauthorized immigration. Other groups, including licensed recruitment agencies, criticize the Philippine government for failing to go after unscrupulous agencies and tighten the travel bans imposed on destinations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Nigeria. The travel bans, imposed at different times mainly for security reasons, have not stopped Filipinos going to these nations. Filipinos continue to pour into Iraq, with undocumented workers making up half of the more than 7,000 staff mainly assigned to US facilities in Baghdad. In Lebanon, despite a mass evacuation of OFWs in 2006, many of the more than 6,000 repatriated to the Philippines have gone back, defying the ban. The defiance is creating headaches for authorities that use up millions of pesos to rescue abused and stranded workers. Unlike most regular workers, undocumented OFWs are underpaid and exposed to physical and mental abuse by their employers. Many, especially domestic help, run away from employers to the nearest Philippine consular post. Ed Bellido, of the OWWA, views the agency’s presence in 30 posts attached to the Philippine missions abroad as “partly an indication of the seriousness of the problems of contract labor migration.” However, “every post has varying needs and requirements,” he says in an e-mail. Every year, OWWA spends P16 million to repatriate Filipino workers in distress. OWWA Administrator Marianito Roque says the agency runs as a trust fund for documented OFWs, but repatriation does not exclude unauthorized immigrants. Besides repatriation costs, the OWWA shells out $20,000 a month to maintain its offices, mainly in the Middle East where most of them are, according to Roque. The Philippines’ response to the mass evacuation of traumatized domestic help from Lebanon led to a new policy doubling to $400 the standard monthly salary for housekeepers and raising the age requirement for such labor. About 60 percent of those repatriated were unauthorized workers. Reports of domestic help being locked up by employers and having to jump off buildings to escape the hostilities, as well as evidence of physical and psychological abuse, were among the disturbing pictures of the impact of the war in Lebanon. As expected, manpower agencies and their overseas brokers want an end to the year-old policy, alleging that it would likely “kill” the Philippines’ dominance in the global domestic-help market. Unwilling to budge, the labor department has sent officials to North America and Europe to look for new markets for Filipino skills. Meanwhile, domestic helpers were required to complete culture and language lessons in the hope that these would protect them from abusive employers. Former Labor Secretary and now Supreme Court Justice Arturo Brion says the Philippine government does not mind losing its global dominance in the household workers market. He adds that the new policy has promoted respect for Filipino domestic helpers, making slave-like conditions for them unacceptable. The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration reported that deployment decreased by 10 percent in the first quarter of 2007 as a result of the new policy. The demand for household workers dropped 87 percent in the last quarter of 2007. But the number of Filipinos leaving the Philippines continued to rise and is again expected to breach the one-million mark, as in 2006. While the Philippine government denies that labor export is a policy, it is always on the lookout for new markets abroad for Filipino skills. In almost all of President Arroyo’s foreign trips, she comes back not only with reports of fresh investments, but also of new employment opportunities. Repatriating OFWs Repatriating OFWs in distress is no easy job, Roque says. In some cases, OWWA personnel ask the help of other Filipinos in rescuing domestic helpers locked up by employers in a Middle East homes. The workers’ centers in Saudi Arabia are filled “beyond capacity” by runaway OFWs. Roque says some stranded workers could not be immediately repatriated to the Philippines because their employers held their passports. Extreme “exit” difficulties in some host countries create “strained relations” with the Philippines, according to Roque. The Lebanese government did little to help repatriate OFWs from Beirut during the Israeli attacks. Sometimes the only time stranded workers can come home without facing legal difficulties is when the host country implements an amnesty. Kathy Callo and her three children did just that when the government of the UAE offered to pardon illegal immigrants in 2002. Callo’s children, aged ten, seven and five, were all out of school because of their illegal status. Callo’s husband worked for a dry-dock company, but she and the children had to hide in their small home in a residential compound with other undocumented expatriates. The children had only one playmate who visited them every week. There is no denying that the Philippines’ labor export has been propping up much of its economy with the remittances sent by OFWs, which the World Bank says reached $15 billion in 2007 and made the Philippines one of five nations with the highest remittances received from overseas immigrants. Meanwhile, the Philippine labor department has signed several OFW agreements with host countries, but there is little, if nothing, in those accords regarding the treatment of undocumented workers. (The author wrote this piece as a Yuchengco Media Fellow at the Center for the Pacific Rim, University of San Francisco.) If you have any feedback, reaction or comment about the article, please email buzzwordmedia@yahoo.com.
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