|
Ms. Jimenez wrote this series of articles as a Yuchengco
Media Fellow at the Center for the Pacific Rim,
University of San Francisco
Conclusion ...
SAN
FRANCISCO—Adrian Atoprea becomes emotional when asked
how his life was more than 20 years ago. Despite having
his own four-bedroom house and an expensive car in one
of the most progressive cities in the United States, he
remembers perfectly how his family struggled hard in the
Philippines.
Atoprea,
a successful registered nurse, was separated from his
siblings when he and an older sister were sent to a
province in Northern Luzon to live with his paternal
grandmother. His two younger brothers, on the other
hand, lived with their maternal grandmother in Manila.
“We were
so poor then. I remember selling vegetables and ice
candy from house to house. I felt bad whenever I sat by
the stairs waiting for my mother and she wouldn’t show
up,” said the 30-year-old nurse.
He was 5
when his father Jose, a machinist, left for the United
States on a tourist visa. Atoprea’s father intended to
work in California, at the prodding of his mother.
“My
mother hated the fact that he was irresponsible. He
woke up late and was always absent for work. So she
thought maybe, he would change if he went abroad,”
recalls Atoprea.
But the
family’s dream became a nightmare when he left them for
another woman. For several years, Jose Atoprea never
communicated or sent money to his family in the
Philippines.
He lived
in the United States as an illegal alien and married an
American citizen by presenting a fake death certificate
of his legal wife in the Philippines. His act was later
uncovered and his second marriage was voided. He also
left his second wife, with whom he had two children.
Left
with no choice but to single-handedly raise a family,
Mrs. Atoprea also left her four children to work as a
domestic helper in Singapore when Adrian was in grade
school. For many years, the children lived with
relatives, some of whom treated them badly.
The
exodus of workers has contributed much to keeping the
Philippine economy afloat, but it has also brought
several drawbacks. The disintegration of the family is
probably the worst of them, says a study by the Center
for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), a Manila-based nongovernment
organization.
“While
remittances bring material and economic benefits to
other family members, migrant families have to contend
with the grave impact of migration: absentee-parenting,
dysfunctional families, growing-up problems of children,
and breakdown of marriages,” noted the CMA report in
2006.
Nongovernment organizations (NGOs) claim that long
absence exposes an immigrant to a number of trying
situations, including emotional stress, that sometimes
lead to extramarital affairs and eventual abandonment of
one’s family.
Abandoned families
While
the Philippine government reaps the economic benefits of
the diaspora, NGOs are alarmed that the exodus of
Filipino workers abroad is creating cracks in
immigrants’ families.
The
usual cases: the overseas worker acquires a new family
in the host country or engages in extramarital affairs,
or the spouse left behind becomes unfaithful. In either
case, it is the children who suffer most from the
family’s collapse.
Katherine Santos’s 16-year-old son couldn’t forgive his
father who left them when the boy was three years old.
“My son
abhorred him ever since he was small. We consulted a
psychiatrist to help him deal with his feelings for his
dad. The last time his father called, Junior gave him a
mouthful of harsh words. He said he should have not
abandoned us,” says Santos, holding back tears.
Archie
Santos left his family in 1999 for the United States and
has never reunited with them. Undocumented, Santos
accepts meager jobs in construction and in small
restaurants while hopping from one state to another to
evade immigration authorities. He has never sent support
to his family since leaving them in the Philippines.
In 2001
Katherine got a phone call from her husband when she
visited relatives in the United States. He asked her to
stay and join him, but she chose to go back to the
Philippines for her son.
Katherine saw the extent of the boy’s anger toward his
father when they flew to the United States a few years
later. Her husband, who lives with other undocumented
Filipinos in an apartment in California, asked that they
meet him in Hollywood.
“I told
my son to decide if we would meet his father. He opted
to go to Disneyland and Universal Studios instead,”
recalls the working mother. She knew that Junior would
have nothing to do with his father.
Katherine’s son had turned to her male officemates for
fatherly attention. Junior’s hatred for his father grew
worse when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Even
then, Katherine did not receive support from her
husband.
Grave
concern
Advocacy
groups helping families of OFWs noted an increase in the
number of complaints against immigrants abandoning their
brood. The government has focused much on remittance and
overlooked the social impact on families left behind,
they say.
In 2002
the Episcopal Commission on Migrants and Itinerants, an
attached agency of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of
the Philippines, called on the government to stop
actively sending labor abroad to prevent family
disintegration.
The CBCP
is particularly concerned that some immigrants get
involved in illicit affairs with other OFWs even in
conservative societies in the Middle East where adultery
is punishable by death. Renato Villa, former Philippine
consul general in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), says a
number of Filipinos are jailed there for involvement in
extramarital affairs.
The
bishops are also concerned that grandparents and
relatives who act as surrogates are raising OFWs’
children. They argue that children’s needs are best met
in an environment where parents or a parent is present.
A survey
by the Scalabrini Migration Center shows that parental
absence leaves an emotional mark on children of
immigrants. There is hardly a family that does not have
an immigrant member, since 10 percent of the
Philippines’ more than 80 million people are overseas
workers. This does not include the estimated one million
unauthorized immigrants.
Recently, the Philippine ambassador to Saudi Arabia
reported receiving letters from families complaining
that their OFW relative had stopped sending money home.
In
addition, an Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA)
survey from 2006 to 2007 found that three out of 10
overseas contract workers in the Cordillera have either
abandoned or cut off ties with their families. Relatives
complained that they no longer receive support from
their overseas-based breadwinners.
Despite
longstanding warnings from civil society groups, it is
only now that the government is openly recognizing the
problem of family disintegration and slowly taking
measures to address it.
An
annual government-run contest that awards OFW families
has been redesigned in 2007 to honor those who have
maintained a healthy relationship despite the absence of
one or both parents.
Social
mobility
Since
the oil boom in the Middle East in the 1970s, labor
deployment abroad has been a major economic strategy of
the Philippines. Dollar remittance from the estimated
nine million OFWs is expected to exceed $16 billion in
2008, when deployment is expected to hit the one-million
mark for the third time.
“It is
not the policy of the Arroyo administration to promote
overseas employment as part of its medium- and long-term
development plans. It is an option for every Filipino to
take,” says Ed Ballido, director of the OWWA, in an
e-mail.
Despite
the negative social impact of immigration on families,
the economic gains of labor deployment are undeniable. A
survey by Nielsen Media Research in February and March
2007 covering Metro Manila and other key cities showed
that at least 813,000 Filipino families benefit from
remittances.
The
survey showed yearly remittances have raised some 23
percent of families to the middle class. All families
surveyed owned a television set, VCD or DVD players, and
could afford to go shopping and go to the movies.
Anita
and Jerome Gonzales know this very well. They were able
to send three of their four children to college when
they worked in the United States for six years. Working
for a family in New Hampshire, they endured the risks of
being undocumented as they sent their children to
school. Their eldest is married.
The
Gonzales family pinned their hopes on Glen, their
youngest, who graduated last year as a nurse. Glen took
the Philippines’ nursing board exams in June and was
planning to head for the United States when he passed
and got a license. Once in America, Glen was expected to
petition his parents and the rest of his brothers.
But this
dream is no longer possible. In August, a still unknown
assailant stabbed Glen to death while he was on his way
home. His parents were forced to return to the
Philippines to bury him.
“He was
planning to come to the US to work so that we could come
home and stop being illegal aliens. I guess that’s not
going to happen anymore,” Anita says. Two weeks after
Glen’s remains were laid to rest, the results of the
board exams came out. He passed.
Labor
export: Boon or bane?
RUBEN
Kalinga, an undocumented alien in San Francisco, is not
too excited to learn that he may finally get an official
identification document for the first time in 11 years.
The city’s Board of Supervisors in November voted to
issue municipal ID cards to all San Francisco residents
regardless of legal status, starting 2008.
“I’ll
have it checked first. It might do me more harm than
good,” says the street artist, wondering how to react to
the news he heard on the radio.
Not
having an identification card has been a problem for
this former seafarer who left his ship in Florida to try
his luck in San Francisco, one of few US cities that
declared itself a “sanctuary” for undocumented
immigrants.
Two
months ago, Kalinga was arrested for drinking alcohol in
public. His arresting officers, whom he claims know him
because they see him perform downtown, gave him the
moniker “alien from Mars” for not possessing anything to
identify him.
This was
not his first brush with the law. The father of six was
previously arrested for holding a fake California ID,
which he bought from someone on Mission Street for $30.
“If I
can apply for a driver’s license using that, then I’ll
get it. But perhaps getting an ID would immediately
identify me as an illegal,” Kalinga hesitates.
Joaquin
Gonzales, an official of the Immigrant Rights
Commission, says the new ID system might send the “wrong
signal” to those who wish to enter the United States
illegally and those on tourist visas who intend to
overstay.
“It
legalizes your personality,” he adds, explaining that
the measure would allow cardholders to transact business
with government offices and the private sector,
including banks and credit-card companies.
It
doesn’t sit well with San Franciscans. In a survey by
the San Francisco Chronicle, 83 percent opposed the
supervisors’ legislation while 17 percent supported it.
Immigration is also causing heated debates in the US
presidential campaign.
For many
years, the city administration has been at odds with the
federal government on issues pertaining to immigration.
It had declared San Francisco an INS raid-free zone.
Recently, Mayor Gavin Newsom reasserted the city’s
“sanctuary” status in the wake of a bill in Congress
that tried to criminalize the hiring of unauthorized
workers.
Antonio
Morales, deputy Philippine consul general, hints that
the measure may reach the US Supreme Court since much of
America’s economy depends on inexpensive labor. He
estimated the number of Filipinos illegally staying in
the Bay Area to be “a little over five thousand.”
“There
are lots of opportunities for employment, especially for
those who don’t ask for high wages. The demand for cheap
labor can only be filled by these immigrants. So we see
two sides opposing each other: one for stricter
immigration laws and employers who would not want to be
penalized for hiring immigrants who contribute to the
economy,” he says.
Cooperation
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 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.
Strained
relations
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. |
