A Filipina graced the cover of the New York Times magazine last weekend. No, she isn't a supermodel or a celebrity. She is much better than that. She is an OFW. Rosalie Comodas Villanueva, who grew up in the tough neighborhood of Leveriza, is a nurse at Al Rahba Hospital in Abu Dhabi. She makes $24,000 a year — compared to the $1,200 she made while working here at home. Her parents have been taking care of her two children for years. The lengthy feature honors OFW sagas, Rosalie's, her family's and many others like her.
There is no more doubt that our OFWs are now a world class phenomenon. Nearly 10% of our 89 million people live abroad. About 3.6 million are OFWs, another 3.2 million have migrated permanently, largely to the United States, and 1.3 million more are thought to be overseas illegally. There are a million OFWs in Saudi Arabia alone, followed by Japan , Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Taiwan. OFWs are in at least 170 countries, and about a quarter of the world's sailors come from the Philippines. They send home $15 billion a year, saving not just the economy but a succession of governments from a rebellion by the jobless and hungry poor.
I once made the joke that there is no need for our people to learn English because in a few more years, the world will understand Tagalog. Imagine all the Filipina nannies from Hong Kong to Rome to Toronto and London and who's going to say they aren't teaching more than a word of Tagalog to the young children they are taking care of. I think it was writer Jessica Zafra who once declared that we will one day conquer the world: today their bedrooms and bathrooms but tomorrow, the world!
Indeed, as Jason DeParle, the author of the lengthy NYT magazine article observed, the Philippines has exported labor for at least 100 years. The pineapple plantation workers of Hawaii, who left the Philippines in the early 1900s come to mind. Greg Macabenta traced an early colony of Filipinos in the New Orleans area, descendants of Filipinos who might have jumped ship during the Galleon trade between Acapulco and Manila.
This modern migration we are seeing today took shape 30 years ago under Ferdinand Marcos. And we were not alone. A number of Asian and Latin American countries were sending migrants abroad for the same reasons. A growing number of economists see migrants, and the money they send home, DeParle wrote, as a part of the solution to global poverty.
This view of effectively making the poor pay for development is distasteful. "It risks obscuring the personal price that migrants and their families pay. It could be used to gloss over, or even justify, the exploitation of workers. And it could offer rich countries an excuse for cutting foreign aid and other development efforts," DeParle wrote.
The worse part is how the phenomenon makes it easy for governments to develop a dependence on worker remittances. Migrants all over the world, according to DeParle, sent home some $300 billion last year. In contrast, the world spent $104 billion on foreign aid.
According to DeParle, the Philippines, which received $15 billion in formal remittances in 2006, ranked fourth among developing countries behind India ($25 billion), China ($24 billion) and Mexico ($24 billion). "Remittances make up three percent of the GDP in Mexico but 14% in the Philippines.
DeParle continues: "Despite fears that the money goes to waste, a growing literature shows positive effects. Remittances cut the poverty rate by 11% in Uganda and six percent in Bangladesh, according to studies cited by the World Bank, and raised education levels in El Salvador and the Philippines.
"Being private, the money is less susceptible to corruption than foreign aid; it is also better aimed at the needy and 'countercyclical' — it rises in response to slumps and natural disasters. Remittances help reduce government borrowing costs, saving the Philippines about half a billion dollars in interest each year… And consumption among the poor is hardly a bad thing."
The downside, DeParle writes, "is the risk of dependency, among individuals waiting for a check or for rulers (like Marcos) who use the money to avoid economic reforms… No country has escaped poverty with remittances alone. 'Remittances can't solve structural problems,' said Kathleen Newland of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research group. 'Remittances can't compensate for corrupt governments, nepotism, incompetence or communal conflict…'"
Then… there are the social costs. "Among the biggest worries, in the Philippines and beyond, are the 'left behind' kids, who are alternately portrayed as dangerous hoodlums and consumerist brats. Some people fear that their gadgets and clothes, sent from guilty parents abroad, corrupt village values."
Still, studies have found out that overall, "the migrants' kids did better in school, had better physical health, experienced less anxiety and were more likely to attend church…one theory is that remittances compensate for the missing parent's care. The study found migrants' kids taller and heavier than their counterparts, suggesting higher caloric intake, and much more likely to attend private school… There is no doubt that migration has costs… The point is that not migrating has costs, too — the cost of wrenching poverty."
The growth in migration, DeParle admits, "has roiled the West, but demographic logic suggests it will only continue. Aging industrial economies need workers. People in poor countries need jobs. Transportation and communication have made moving easier. And the potential economic gains are at record highs… with about one Filipino worker in seven abroad at any given time, migration is to the Philippines what cars once were to Detroit: its civil religion. A million Overseas Filipino Workers left last year, enough to fill six 747s a day."
This is why for me, the OFW phenomenon is a source of hope for the future. As I told a group of foreign businessmen last week, " with all our negatives in factors of production important to investors, it seems our real plus factor lies with our human resource. I am banking my hope in that large population of OFWs who will one day come home with new ideas, new dreams and a stronger determination to make political leaders accountable."
The world knows from first hand experience with our OFWs that we are good workers and top notch professionals, making them the best incentive to come here and invest. And one of these days, their talents would be used to bring to the motherland the economic gains they helped bring for the countries they worked in.
Summa cum laude
Mikaela Irene Fudolig, a 16-year-old graduated last weekend with a degree in BS Physics and with the highest academic honor of summa cum laude. She has a 1.099 grade point average. She is the youngest student to graduate from the UP in recent years and one of only two admitted to the state university without a high school diploma and without taking the UP College Admission Test, ANC reported.
I am glad there is an early placement program at UP to take care of gifted students like her. She was only 11 when she started taking college level courses at the university. I am sure we have many other students like her whose world class brains are being wasted in an educational system that provide them little challenge.
One other great thing… she isn't taking up nursing to work abroad. She is staying on at UP to teach. My congratulations to her, her parents and the UP professors who conceived and implemented the program! Let us now look for more Mikaelas out there and give them the education that they need.
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