Diaspora: Symptoms of deepening crisis

Not since the Marcos administration hit upon the idea of mass labor export to the Middle East has the number of Filipinos leaving for jobs abroad increased exponentially. There are now more Filipinos officially deployed for work abroad than new jobs created in the local economy every year of the last six years.

This is clear and simple diaspora – when more and more of the population leave because of famine, war and pestilence, grave natural disaster where the economy ends up in shambles. In our case, the Philippine economy is left in shambles through the rapacity of foreign investors and their subaltern comprador-landlords. Filipino capitalists are decimated, livelihoods and jobs are wiped out and workers are made penniless consumers.

For those who are lucky, workers and peasants have one recourse – kapit sa patalim (grasp the dagger). Leave family and community and country, work as modern-day slaves in the most menial, demeaning jobs that pay a pittance of $300 – $500 a month – a little more than the monthly wage of $250 but far less than the living expenses of $677 for a family of five [IBON].

This means that our society has reached the tipping point – our economy is now truly mainly dependent on its overseas workers. This is unlike the decades and decades before when we say that the domestic economy was simply unable to provide enough jobs for its labor force.

We are now similar to Cape Verde Islands and Samoa – island countries too small to maintain a viable economy and thus become mainly dependent on their migrant workers.

But to compare us to these SIDS (small island developing states) is unthinkable since we are one of the 10 largest countries in population in the world. There is no reason why the Philippines cannot develop into a strong large industrial economy – except that this would not serve the benefit of foreign powers and their corporations served by our comprador landlords.

There are now 2.1 million overseas workers deployed in 2016 (equivalent to 5,771 leaving every day) and 2.0 million (5,460 daily) Filipinos forced to go overseas for work in 2017. This number does not include the so-called “self-deployed” workers – who leave as tourists and end up undocumented or those who are able to get jobs through direct hire (including online) opportunities.

Since 40 years ago when our contract workers were deployed in Saudi Arabia and in a few countries in the Middle East the number of overseas Filipinos has chronically been on the rise – from 1,000 per day 20 years ago which we thought was already too many to 3,000. Then in less than a decade it has doubled and soon we will be hitting 6,000 officially deployed workers per day on average.

We called them OCWs (overseas contract workers) then. But this term seemed to be too technical and the appellation was changed to OFW (overseas Filipino workers) presumably to include emigrant workers and others who were not deployed through short-term contracts including the large mass of undocumented workers.

This is the large mass of Philippine diaspora created by a dysfunctional society with a fractious landlord-comprador elite, under the economic/political clutches of Uncle Sam, under multiple revolutions/rebellions of a people struggling for liberation and with a high population growth of English-speaking, travel-savvy resourceful people.

Thus the Philippines is one of the largest diasporas in the world, along with China and Mexico which also receive the largest remittance incomes from their workers and immigrants. Through their remittances, the OFW keep the Philippine financial system afloat since 1990s. We are awash with cash remittance earnings despite decades of ballooning public debt.

Most every Filipino has a close relative or two who is or was an OFW. We hold them all in high esteem for their sacrifice and they are our heroes. We also know that behind their heroism are tales of survival from slavery, most of all the self-imprisonment in a foreign land away from family, community and country in a thankless job that only benefits the foreign countries, companies and families who enslave them.

To become modern slaves, they had to be disempowered by a loss of choice in their lives – by unemployment, by lack of concern and care by the government for the livelihood, lack of care by employers and government who had fixed them under short term contracts, lack of care and services for education, health and welfare for their children and family. They had no choice but to leave the country for enslavement.