When Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his technocrats embarked on a national policy of exporting Filipino labour, he was responding to a pressing economic need while utilising a long-existent inclination among individual Filipinos. Whether it was “Enrique el Negro” who circumnavigated the globe with Magellan’s ill-fated expedition, the Filipinos who settled in the Barataria Bay settlements in Louisiana in the 17th century, generations of Ilocano plantation workers in Hawaii and Filipino mess stewards in the US Navy, the Filipinos have travelled - and settled - far and wide in search of greener pastures. Today between 8 and 11 million Filipinos, or 10 per cent of our population, are estimated to be living overseas, of whom over two million are overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
The number of Filipinos seeking employment opportunities abroad climbs as steadily as do the remittances they send home, amounting to the billions of dollars, and over 10 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. Together with India, China and Mexico, the Philippines is among the top exporters of labour in the world. The remittances were expected to shrink in 2009 amid the global recession but while the remittances from Italy and the United States fell indeed, this was offset by increases in remittances from other places like Canada. Economist Bernardo Villegas also pointed out that Typhoons Parma and Ketsana led to an increase in remittances as OFWs sent funds home for recovery and rebuilding.
This year, the Bangko Sentral (Central Bank) says the upward trend is continuing. Remittances increased by 8.5 per cent to $1.372 billion in January, $107 million more than the $1.265 billion sent home in the same month last year. We recall a foreign analyst’s remarks a few years back that this umbilical cord connecting our domestic economy to the global one essentially makes our governments non-liable for however well or badly it manages the economy. The remittances will roll in, dependents at home will be tided over, the predictable, because periodic, infusion of cash will trickle up and down the national economy.
Villegas said the task for government is to fine-tune its OFW social policies to minimise problems “from separated families, unscrupulous recruiters and employers, bureaucratic obstacles, and lack of political representation.” This is predicated on his confidence that OFWs are flexible and daring enough to quickly identify new opportunities for employment that open up even as specific markets wind down or abruptly close.
Periodic news of markets on the downturn or in danger of closing send jitters through OFW communities and their dependents. Now there is talk of a new isolationism in the US, and political pressure for the Obama administration to bring jobs back that have been outsourced abroad. Another problem is that previously-expanded quotas for immigrants who study in the fields of science and technology have resulted in an influx of students from India and China, who then cornered the market for low-paying research jobs, making employment in those fields unattractive for Americans. Now industry and politicians are at loggerheads over how to attract foreign talent while getting Americans interested in those fields.
Singapore has announced that it will reduce the number of foreign workers coming in over the next five years. This follows similar moves in other countries such as Taiwan, which announced a 25-per cent cap on foreign workers at the height of the Asian financial crisis and more recently adjusted its policy, basing the quota of foreign workers on its unemployment rate, which gives specific industries greater flexibility.
But the social costs of the OFW phenomenon, combined with the lack of a clear policy and a tendency to use remittances and fees as sources of easy money, are harmful to our social and political fabric. Brain drain and shattered families and overdependence by relatives are conspiring to deprive our country of its civic life. It is incumbent on all the presidential candidates to put forward their agenda for addressing the needs of OFWs abroad and their families here at home and maximising the potentials of the Philippines' domestic economy.
