Migrante

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Somewhere in the process of settling into Baguio, going on vacation and making friends with my colleagues I forgot I was here doing human rights work. I chose to make human rights my career because it gets in your blood - from the first day I sat in a human rights class I felt connected to the people I was learning about, and since then, everytime I start to get distracted human rights issues jumps right back into my life to remind me of what I am suppose to be focusing on. And that point was brought back to me last week, when I visited the Migrante Metro-Baguio office.

Migrante is an international NGO that advocates the rights of migrant workers. Migrante Metro-Baguio focuses their work on the numerous overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) that leave this area every day. On Thursday I spent time with the coordinator of Migrante Metro-Baguio, and she talked to me about the complicated issues that surround the OFW system. The issues are so complicated that I'mnot even sure where to start. I guess I should start with the facts, Migrantes and the government's.

In the Philippines the biggest industry is actually OFWs. There are approximately 10 million Filipinos currently working temporarily overseas. Every day another 3000-4000 leave the country to start new temporary positions. In order to go overseas a Filipino needs to go through a placement agency. The placement agencies, which I will explain in more detail later, assure that the OFW will be paid in American dollars. Every OFW sends money home to their family, which typically gets a 50 peso to the dollar exhange rate, and keeps these families afloat financially. These remittances are the bigget single form of revenue of the Phlippine government. The government makes approximately 18 billion dollars a year off of OFW remittances. And in 2006 the President declared the OFWs as modern national heroes. Now coming from a North American point of view this doesn't sound all that bad. Young Filipino men and women get to travel, they get to work in higher paying jobs then they would at home, and they get a chance to become citizens of another countries. Their families get a high exchange rate on the money their children send home, and older Filipinos get to retire and take care of their grandchildren while their children are overseas. In fact, the Filipino government claims that the OFW system was born out of a natural Filipino love of adventure and travel. That also sounds pretty plusable to me. But spending time with Migrante Metro-Baguio I realized that like most things in the Philippines, something the government says is positive is pretty ugly on the other side of the coin.

No one is an OFW because they love travel or adventure. Though there are numerous reasons that Filipinos go over seas, none of them are that rosy. The main reason that Philippine citizens are leaving the country is poverty. Filipino parents struggle to put their children through university, assuming that once they graduate their children will be able to help suppliment their families income. Many of these parents work second and third jobs, borrow money from private money lenders and even go overseas themselves as OFWs. But after graduation most students find themeslves unable to find work in a job market with only a 30% graduation hiring rate. These people find themselves desperate for a job, and desperate for a way to help support their families. When the government does not provide any sort of social service, and is allowing mutinational corporations to contractualize the labour system many Filipino universsity graduates decide they have no choice but to become OFWs.

The government claims that the do not have a policy of encouraging OFWs. However, the institutions that have been built to accommodate the OFW system tell a different story. The government has developped a post-secondary education system in the last five years that trains mostly nurses, computer tecchnicians and care givers - jobs that are highly in demand in the developed world. They have also instated a policy that only allows people to work overseas if they go through a placement agency. These placement agencies have to be lisenced by the POEA (the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency) and pay yearly fees to the government. The government also consistantly passes laws the relate to OFWs and have deveoped an agency to support OFWs, the OWWA (Overseas Worker Welfare Agency). Although none of this institutionalization has made the OFW system less abusive for the actual workers.

Filipinos driven to work overseas can not rely on any support from their governments once they leave the country to preform their heroic duty. A Filipino must be a university graduate to be an OFW, But once they graduate they have to pay a placement agency to get them a job, almost always as a caregiver or as a domentic helper. The fee is regulated as one full months pay in American dollars, approximately 5000 - 10,000 pesos, however the government turns a blind eye to agencies charging between 50,000 - 150,000 pesos. Most OFWs are required to borrow from private money lenders in order to pay the agency fee, hoping they will be able to pay their debt with money they make overseas. In this system the higher waged coutries inevitably require the OFW to pay a larger placement fee. The destinations with the highest fees are Canada and the United States. The destinations with the lowest are Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. As a result the latter are the highest OFW receiving coutries.

Outside the first world OFWs are experincing varying levels of abuse in their placements. In Hong Kong there are numerous cases of agencies substituting contracts when the employee arrives. The OFW leaves the Philippines thinking she will be a nurse and discoveres she is tied to two years as a domestic helper, or goes to be a caregiver and finds herself working in a garnment factory. Instead of charging agencies that lie to OFWs and substitute contracts the government changed the laws to allow agencies to do just that. There is now no way for an OFW to assure that she is walking into the placement she paid for and agreed to in the Philippines. In Hong Kong there is also a growing problem of agenies hiring numberous OFWs for one job and then allowing the employer to pick which they want, sending the others home after only weeks, even though thay all paid the ageny's palcement fee. These women arrive home with no money to pay the debt they incurred to become an OFW or to support their families. The government claims that it is taking this crime serously, but very few placement agencies have ever been charged. In Saudi Arabia the abuse is even worse.

After a placement in Saudi Arabia most OFWs come home having suffered physical ause and frequently even rape at the hands of their employers. When a women runs away from the home where she is a caregiver or a domestic helper to seek refuge in the Philippine Embassy she is told she needs to be strong in order to fulfill her duties to her country and family and go back to finish her contract. The few women who have stood up to their abusers and fought back have been arrested and sentenced severely to things like life imprisonment and death by beheading by the Saudi authorities. These imprisoned OFWs receive no help from the Philippine government, who claim that they can not intervene because it would cause diplomatic tension with the Saudi government. Migrante recieves news of one or two OFWs arriving home at the Nino Aquino International Airport in coffins everyday. However, even in the first world an OFW can not expect full human rights protection.

For years Canada has been receiving Filipino caregivers and domestic helpers. Since the institutionalization of the OFW system they have been pourng over our borders. The issue is that these women live within a family home and are given less personal freedom and less pay then would ever be acceptable for a Canadian doing the same job. An OFW is given food and board by her empoyer, but is also constantly on call and typically gets one day or afternoon off a week. When you divide the OFWs pay by the gratuitous number of hours they are being asked to work they are making well below the Canadian minimum wage. Apparently the labour rights Canadians have fought so hard for, a minimum wage, a five day week and an 8 hour day, don't apply to Philippine women and men working in our country. An arrogant Canadian could respond that the quality of life an OFW finds in Canada is so much better then the quality of life they left that the small issue of labour laws is irrelevant. That would be to suggest that Canadians deserve more rights then other people. That would be to disregard the humanity of the people who come from the Philippines to work in Canada. I think though that when you start to understand the pressure that is on these men and women you can disregard their humanity.

The women and men who leave the Philippines every day are leaving because they have families who desperately need the financial support that an overseas job can provide. Most of them are already married and have a couple of children. They sacrifice their own happiness by seperating from their family for years at a time. They miss their children growing up and many come home to find that their marriage has disintegrated while they where away. And while they are away they support as wide a breadth of family as possible. Filipinos have a strong sense of family unity, they have strong relarionships with extended family and typically act as a unit instead of as individuals. While an OFW is working abroad he or she is sending money home for ther spouse, their chidren, their parents, their siblings, and their siblings children at the least, but it is typically also anyone else they can afford to support.

The men and women who are working as OFWs are being forced to travel overseas to find the financial stability they can not find at home. Put yourself in their shoes. Would you want to leave everyone you love to go work in a country where you may be abused, and could possibly be killed? Would you want to waste your university education to be a care giver or a domestic helper? Neither do they.

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Comments

[nicolette davis]

look at the government
Look. the government of the country should look after their people. I at the age of 28 a single parent raisdes $3 milliondollars and built a hospital and university for the land mine victims and to educate all.I sold my house and have never owned a house since then and had to put my daughter through University. I am so glad i did it. Please do not taken in by the politicians