We are Filipino migrant workers.

We are Filipino migrant workers.

We compose 11 percent of Filipinos, about 18 percent of our labor force. We came from the democratic sectors of our society: workers or children of workers, farmers or children of farmers. The rich abhors us and will never be with us in our diaspora. For them we are but footstools or worst, only tools for fevelopment.

We are always overlooked by our lawmakers. We, in fact, are not even represented in the law making body, and remembered only by some in our government because we send home money that may come useful to fill up their budgets or to pay their debts which does not even concern our livelihood. Politicians boasted of how they created jobs. But what jobs? We have been forced to this odyssey to find our livelihood elsewhere. They juggle numbers to make the impression that the country has an unemployment rate of (for 2010) only 7.3%, actually fooling the people since they did not include the Pinoys working elsewhere abroad as part of those they should be giving jobs to at home!.

We, as a country, are supposed to be resourceful enough to find work for all of our citizens. Sending us abroad to find work is an admission that we (not only the government but also the rest of us, too) have failed, as a country, failed to have prospered enough to have enough jobs for our total population.

Remittances sent home by us in 2009 amounted to about US$17.348 billion. This increases year on year and is about five percent of our total export earnings. But, those billions of dollars really don’t amount to much. This computes to an average of less than P7,000 a month for our families of about 7 or more (including our cousins, uncles and parents, in some cases). Thus, it is not surprising that the our experience has not really been a good one for most of us migrant workers.

A microfinance non-governmental organization, the Social Enterprise Development Partnerships Inc. (SEDPI) found that one out of 10 overseas Filipino workers ends up broke even after years of working abroad with the purpose of providing a better life for their families.

What are we striving for? We only want jobs in our own country. To fulfil the dream that we, one day, could return to our country never to be separated again from our land and family in order to live. Where true freedom and justice prevails. Where genuine democracy reigns.

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