Article IHT Print Page Copyright 2001 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com Exporting Workers: Filipinos Count the Cost of an Exodus Thomas Fuller International Herald Tribune Thursday, August 16, 2001
DAVAO CITY, Philippines After 10 years working as an engineer in Saudi Arabia, Poe Gratela realized it was time to come home when, during a family visit, his youngest daughter asked a piercing question. "She said: 'Who are you? Why are you sleeping in my mother's bed?'" Mr. Gratela recalled. "Can you accept that as a father?" For more than 25 years, millions of Filipinos like Mr. Gratela have traveled to remote corners of the globe to work on construction sites, in computer chip factories or in households as maids. Perhaps more than anywhere else, overseas work has become a way of life here, transforming a country made up of more than 7,000 islands into a nation of migrants. The money the workers send home - $6 billion last year alone - has become the Philippines' buffer for bad times, keeping cash registers ringing during oil shocks and global downturns like the one deflating economies today. But after a quarter century of exporting talent, the Philippines is also counting the scars: separated families, children "orphaned" by parents working overseas and the much-discussed "brain drain" - the well-educated Filipinos who never return. This lush and fertile country must import rice and sugar partly because young people are reluctant to work on farms when they know they can earn much more working overseas. "We count only the dollars and cents," said Randy David, a professor of sociology who hosts a popular television program. "But the costs to the country are not easily measured because they are social." Over the past several years researchers have attempted to study the more subtle effects of such large-scale migration. Maruja Asis, the research director at the nonprofit Scalabrini Migration Center, surveyed more than 100 female workers, asking them, among other questions, how overseas jobs affected their personal lives and self-esteem. Statistics show that about half of female migrants have at least some college education. Yet when they go abroad they often work as maids, bar hostesses or on assembly lines. Mrs. Asis tells the story of a well-educated woman who went to Hong Kong to be a maid and was given a T-shirt to wear for the journey.
Emblazoned on the front were Chinese characters that the woman found out later read: "I am a domestic helper." "It's not an easy life," Mrs. Asis said of such women. "The hours are long and there are daily indignities. The working conditions are fairly inhumane." Many women complain of sexual harassment or back-breaking schedules in "sweat shop" environments. Nonprofit organizations have been formed to track and publicize cases of abused workers. Mr. Gratela, the engineer, is now secretary-general of Migrante International, a group that lobbies the Philippine government to better support its overseas workers. "We're like a commodity sold being by the government," Mr. Gratela said. Migrante International looks into reports of beatings of domestic workers in Hong Kong and investigates the legal rights of Filipinos sentenced to prison or death in Gulf states. Despite emigration's darker side, few Filipinos would question its economic benefits. In a country where a third of the population lives off of less than a dollar a day, foreign jobs are a necessary source of income, especially during recessions. When measured by the money they send home, Philippine workers are the country's second biggest "export" after electronics. "The social costs are terrible," said Aquilino Pimentel, a Filipino senator. "But sometimes when you are faced with survival you have to cling to anything - even if it's the sharp edge of a knife." The economic benefits are obvious in Davao, where despite hard times a fourth shopping mall is scheduled to open in November. Among the 170 shops will be a foreign exchange counter where overseas workers and their families can trade in their foreign earnings. The overseas money helps explain how a city centered around coconut farming, plywood factories and banana plantations can support four shopping malls. The price of a meal at the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in the center of town, after all, is the equivalent of an average day's wages picking coconuts: 80 pesos, or about $1.60. Today, with economies throughout Southeast Asia contracting, the number of Filipino workers going overseas is rising. According to the government, 466,663 workers officially left for overseas jobs in the first half of 2001, an increase of 1.5 percent compared with the same period last year. The true number could be double that. At any one time, up to 10 percent of the country's 75 million people are overseas, according to government estimates. As a resu...