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A Nation of Migrants
The push of rural poverty and a pull of urban job that swelled the population in Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Davao City in the years prior to martial law, had been replaced by the push of massive unemployment and an economy in crisis, and the pull of dollar earning or a better life abroad.
In the United States, Filipino immigrants from across the Pacific now rival in number the Mexicans from just across their southern border. Most Filipinos are professionals, led by doctors and nurses in a continuing ‘brain drain’. And the lines at the US Embassy on Roxas Blvd get longer every day.
In the Middle East, there is hardly an airport where a Filipino isn’t part of the maintenance crew or manning the duty-free shops. In 1984 alone, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration processed 425 061 contract workers, mostly for the Middle East. And overseas labor recruitment has become a sizeable industry.
In Southern Europe, Hong Kong and Singapore, Filipinos are domestics. In Hong Kong ‘Filipina’ has become the generic term of ‘maid’ and they have produced a Filipina doll dressed as a chambermaid.
In Northern Europe and in the outback of Australia, Filipino women are the accommodating mail-order brides of men mostly not ‘good enough’ for their ‘own’ women. Some live lives no better than unpaid domestics with sex privileges. Filipinos have also become the entertainers of Asia. Our bands, Singers, dancers and prostitutes are today the toast of Japan.
But we have likewise the high-level managers. In Asia, specially Hong Kong and Jakarta, sizeable finance-oriented companies employ professional managers from the Philippines. They are sought after for their high expertise, their universal facility with English and what one of them calls ‘dualism’- their being at home in both Asian and Western milieu.
By conservative estimate, there are more than a million Filipino workers overseas. Such a vast poll of man-and woman-power contributing their labor, skills and careers to development and progress of other nations! Their hosts cannot fault them their willingness to serve, nor can we at home blame them for their choice.
Pero, sayang!!
Published: December 04, 2007
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