Labor export and migration trend in the Philippines

Few countries have as many of their citizens living abroad as the Philippines, or depend so greatly on migration for their economic vitality, according to Migration Policy Institute.

Governments record show more than 7.3 million Filipinos, or 8 pecent of the country’s population, currently reside abroad. From 1990 to 2001, official recorded remittances alone averaged 20.3 percent of the country’s export earnings and 5.2 percent of gross national product (GNP), providing a lifeline for many families in a poor country that saw little economic growth in several of those years.

However, impressive, these figures understate the role that migration plays in Filipino national culture and public policy. For more than 25 years, export of temporary labor has been an explicit response to double-digit unemployment rates. The government has developed a sophisticated policy regime to promote and regulate labor immigration. Migrants and migration are valued: Each year, the President celebrates Migrant Workers’ Day by awarding the “Bagong Bayani” (modern-day hero) award to 20 outstanding migrant workers who have demonstrated moral fortitude, hard work and a track record of sending money home.

Recent history

Although Filipinos have a longstanding tradition of migration to the United States and elsewhere, government activism to promote labor migration from the Philippines began in the mid-1970s, when rising oil prices caused a boom in contract migrant labor in the Middle East.

In recent years, male migrants have been joined and are now almost outnumbered by women. The “tiger economies” of Asia rival the Middle East as the major destination for temporary workers while migrants who go to North America and Oceania are far more likely to stay on as permanent immigrants. The occupations of migrants have diversified to include professionals, factory workers and domestic workersm while the tradition of Filipino construction workers, sailors and nurses remain strong.

Government policy

The Philippine government’s goals have been remarkably clear and consistent: Migration should be promoted, but only for temporary work via regulated channels. The results have been mixed. The Philippines supplies an enermous amount of labor through regulated channels: 2.9 million “Overseas Foreign Workers” were abroad under official arrangements in 2000. However, these official, temporary flows coexist with other types of migration: The government estimated that another 1.8 million Filipinos were abroad irregularly in 2000 and that 2.5 million of its citizens had left for permanent residency elsewhere.

Protection of migrants

Although the Philippine government has turned over most of the responsibility for recruiting workers to the private sector, it retains a regulatory role, with the stated purpose of protecting workers from abuse and discouraging illegal recruitment. In order to be licensed, a recruitment agency must be Filipino-owned, meet capitalization and bonding requirements, and not charge workers more than one month’s salary as a placement fee. A Philippine consulate verifies the terms of each worker’s contract with the foreign employer. Should the employer violate the terms of the contract, the Philippine-based recruiter is held responsible through an adjudication process after the migrant returns.

Support to migrants

With time, the government has encouraged migrants to use official migration channels, to send money home and to eventually return at the end of their contract. By migrating officially, migrants receive a number of subsidized benefits: pre-migration training on social and work conditions abroad, life insurance and pension plans, medical insurance and tuition assistance for migrants and his or her family, and eligibility for pre-departure and emergency loans. Registration for these benefits, which are administered by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), is compulsary and costs less than $200 a year. This is paid by the recruitment agency, presumably out of the worker’s wages, or directly by the migrant, in the case of independent migrants and those whose contracts are administered by the POEA.

Remittances are a critical source of foreign exchange, and the government actively encourages migrants to send money home. For example, the OWWA issues an identification card to all official workers that is also a Visa card that can be linked to dollar or peso-denominated savings accounts in a consortium of banks. The card enables remittances to be sent at $3 or less per transaction.

Many of the support services the government provides are also intended to promote continued ties with homeland. The government sponsors tours of Philippine entertainers and support schools in areas overseas with high concentration of migrants. Pyschological counseling services that emphasize maintenance of “Filipino values” are offered through a network of offices abroad. Recently, the government decided to allow overseas workers to vote in national elections, with voting theoretically conditional upon return within two years and committed a significant amount of money to overseas balloting.

Assessing success

It is difficult to say whether the Philippine government’s policies have accomplished their goals of protecting workers’ rights, encouraging return migration and spurring economic growth. Compared with other nations in the region that export labor on a large scale, such as Indonesia, the Philippines has produced flow of migrants, and overseas employment has undeniably raised the incomes of many Filipinos.

Advocates for migrants charge that the government’s efforts to protect official migrants have been inadequate and that it has ignored the abuse and trafficking of irregular migrants. Further, some social commentators charge that the government’s activist stance on migration has not converted irregular migration into regular migration, but rather increased migration of both types. Even by official estimates, undocumented workers constitute a large percentage of Filipinos abroad and most of them work in extremely vulnerable sectors, such as domestic work. A significant number of female migrants become victims of traffickers and are forced into the sex industry, a testament to he human rights problems that Filipino migrants continue to face.

Migration and remittances are however, powerful economic forces in the Philippines that cannot be easily dismissed. Migration has unambiguously raised the income of millions of Filipino workers and their families. It has encouraged investment in education and training in a country where per capita gross national income was a meager $1,030 in 2001 and unemployment rates are high for skilled and unskilled workers alike. Filipinos overseas sent home over $6 billion, or about 8.4 percent of national gross national product (GNP), via formal channels in 2001.  –Manila Times