“Training a doctor costs in excess of $152,000 (or P7.52 million at present exchange rates)… Huge numbers of teachers, including many of the best trained, leave the country directly after qualifying.
And for the state to get no return on this enormous investment is a real problem”. That describes the Filipino diaspora, right?
Wrong. That’s the “brain drain” sapping South Africa, as described by Education Minister Kader Assmal, on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s program: “World on the Move”. And this drain is reflected in the rising numbers who cross borders, often illegally, desperate for a better future.
Globally, one in every 52 migrants comes from Asia and the Pacific. Today, 7.92 million Filipinos work abroad. Within ASEAN, the number of women migrants, and incidence of undocumented migration, are on the upswing, notes Asian Development Bank.
At the Cebu Summit, ASEAN heads of state approved five documents, one of them being: The “ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers”. The accord is not legally-binding. But it is a useful step that commits the 10 ASEAN countries to provide better safeguards for a mobile, mushrooming – and increasingly feminine --workforce. In Hong Kong alone, there are 142,000 Filipinos, 108,000 Indonesians and 30,000 Thais.
Indonesians tend to be younger than most ASEAN migrants who usually are 25 to 30 years old, the ADB survey found. Eight out of 10 completed high school. “Filipinos are among the most highly educated”.
Latin American migrants mostly head for the U.S, sometimes Canada. In contrast, migrants from Asia and the Pacific cascade into over 160 countries and crisscross ASEAN countries. A third of the 165,000 Malaysians, who work in Singapore, commute across the now-flooded Johore causeway daily. Filipino staffs in Doha duty-free shops, teach in Saipan, serve as parish priests in Lebanon, collect garbage in Riyadh and fly jets out of Detroit.
Disparities in law, policy and practice, within ASEAN, cause problems. Malaysian labor laws, for example, do no cover domestic workers. Many “Indonesian maids work 16–18 hours a day, 7 days a week, and earn less then US$5,” Kuala Lumpur’s Sun newspaper reports. In Singapore, pay for Filipino domestic helpers is about 30% more than for Indonesians. They get 1 or 2 days of rest a week, which Indonesians typically do not receive.
“Whether this disparity is market driven is highly debatable”, the study adds. “Filipinos…have well-established network and support systems to get better labor terms and conditions.” A non-legally binding document, the new ASEAN accord will take the first hesitant but welcome steps to close these gaps.
In 2004, migrant workers, the world over, sent home through formal channels, an estimated US $127 billion. What comes through couriers and other conduits is murky.
Asians accounted for about US$53 billion (or 42 percent) of the official stream -- hefty enough to alter Central Bank balance sheets. Filipino overseas workers bought a quarter of the lots sold by big real estate firms in 2006, up from 15% last year. Aside from Mexico, the other top four recipients were: India, Philippines, China and Pakistan.
Bulk of remittances comes in modest packets for families, in Indonesian kampungs, Thai amphurs or our barangays. On average, migrants send back $300 to their families. And the cash goes to the poorer third of the population. For thousands it means food on the table, school for the kids, medicine, even cash for beer, cockfights and jueteng.
Governments and banks are scrambling to improve channels for funneling funds, away from bottomless consumption into lasting investments.
The hunger that drives this riptide of people will not ebb soon. “The movement of people from poor and failing states to rich and stable ones is as inevitable as water running downhill,” says BBC George Alagiah. “If water is a force of nature, then migration is a force of history.”
Alagiah is from Sri Lanka who, migrating via Ghana, who became a leading broadcaster. Those who left Ireland after the Potato Famine enriched America, he says.
If Australia relied solely on migrants from England, it’d be a backwater country today. And the Indian “diaspora” brought commercial energy and professional skills to Britain. “The challenge is not to try to stop migration but how to manage it.”
But how? To stem the torrent of “illegals” from Africa, the European Union is tightening immigration rules. South Africa mutters about invoking the right to refuse systematic recruitment of its professionals. The US is building a wall along the Mexico border. And visa applicants must debunk the “presumption they seek to immigrate.”
Other forces are at work. Modern information technology stokes aspirations. “How come immigrants looking for a better life in the West aren't interested in developing their countries of origin?” gripes a Finnish writer. “Every person has an obligation to their folk and nation and all these immigrants looking for an easier life are dodging their responsibility by harvesting from a table set by others.”
Ultimately, a country that can not hold to its best and brightest, compromises its future. And we Filipinos must ask ourselves: Is waving our migrants good-bye (and waiting for their check in the next mail) a copout for our failure to get our act together at home?
No comments:
Post a Comment