The greatest tragedies inflicted by labor migration

Brain drain, labor diaspora, modern slave trade, these are among the modern social cancers afflicting our nation. As a former labor attaché to Malaysia, Kuwait and Taiwan, and as a former DOLE Undersecretary and Labor Arbiter, I have been a witness to the many sad and horrible stories befalling on our Filipino migrant workers. I know that there are many happy narratives of successful OFWs but we can learn more from the not-so-good experiences of many of our compatriots, who ventured with heavy hearts to foreign lands, leaving behind young and lonely spouses and a dysfunctional family sans a mother or a mother.

I will not focus on the tragedies of Sarah Balabagan who killed her master after she was raped by such a monster, nor of Flor Contemplacion who was executed in Singapore for the murder of her friend Delia Maga, a crime that she did not commit. I will not even touch this time the episode of Mary Jane Veloso who was caught bringing a bag of drugs in Jakarta and is now languishing in jail waiting for execution. I will rather focus on the many Filipinos who worked for 18 hours a day as house maids in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Bahrain Oman and other Middle East countries, working hard for 20 to 30 years and coming home with no savings, old, sick and no family members to take care of them. They sent home all their earnings, and the husbands squandered them or the children spent it all in expensive gadgets and luxuries. The husband has abandoned the home and the children became drug addicts and teenage mothers and fathers.

Migration, despite all the efforts to glorify it, has destroyed the Filipino homes, broken marriages and eroded the basic foundations of the Philippine society. Migration has weakened the nation, and has inflicted too much damage to the culture and soul of the Filipinos. In the name of the almighty dollar, the government has marketed the Filipino human capital to foreign employers. Labor attaches and foreign missions in our embassies abroad are pressured to produce more job orders so that the government can claim that the unemployment rate has been reduced by labor outward migration. Government is too pretentious to claim that it is not promoting outward migration as a matter of public policy. I know whereof I speak. When I was a labor attache to three countries, the DOLE secretary always pressured us to undertake marketing caravans across the Middle East so as to entice employers to employ our human talents.

The result of such a policy is the destruction of the Filipino families. Dysfunctional families with an absentee father find the young growing children without a pillar of strength. There is a psychological inadequacy in the personalities of the kids that could not be repaired by sending the latest brand of cell phones or laptops. Dysfunctional families without a mother at home suffer from an incurable deficiency that cannot be remedied by constant online dialogues. The children's personality suffers from a grave damage that will most probably lead them to certain rush and impulsive actions like alcoholism, gambling, promiscuous sex and even drugs. These damages are beyond pecuniary estimation and our nation stands to suffer for many generations after. If these are not real to you by now, you need to reflect more deeply on this phenomenon.

The government has to take a very hard look at our long-range policy on labor migration. My input on this is simple: Do not train Filipinos primarily to become OFWs. Train them to help build our nation. Second, if we need to send OFWs abroad, choose the highly-skilled like high caliber engineers, senior doctors and nurses and doctorate holders, educators and academic leaders. We should stop sending maids, drivers, construction workers and other virtual manual and sex slaves. There should be a long-range vision to stop sending our human capital to other nations and economies. Filipinos have the freedom to travel but the sovereign state has the police power to control outward migration. The justification is the greater good for the greater number.