In Search of A Future: Our Overseas Filipinos
66There are eleven million of them in the latest count; spread all over the globe; in over one hundred countries; our countrymen from all the islands of our archipelago, have been braving foreign lands and alien cultures, searching for a future because here in our own, they find none. In the far flung corners of the world they have found not only employment but also recognition, success, and a bright future; for themselves and for their children as well.
These are the men and women of two generations with a third close behind, who have joined this exodus in search of a future; beginning in the sixties when our best and brightest began leaving for better opportunities in other countries. For most of them, the United States was the favored destination but there was also Canada, Britain and other European countries.
They left our country driven by a simple desire to better their lives. This is the Filipino Diaspora, fifty years of Filipinos expressing their dissatisfaction and frustration by their departure, fleeing our country, many in desperation because of the lack of opportunities here in the Philippines.
Though the reason for leaving is mainly economic, there are those who also leave out of frustration at the indifference of our leaders. They leave because there is no justice; no dignity for the ordinary Filipino. They leave because they see a dying nation; morally bankrupt and ceaselessly exploited by those who hold wealth and power. Our institutions have become inutile and effete, unresponsive to the needs of our people. Even our strained middle class see little reason to hope and want their sons and daughters to seek their futures abroad.
We have experienced a massive failure of our past leaderships; repeated failures that have seen the condition of our nation go from bad to worse. Our succession of leaders has not given relief to our nation from the curse of poverty. Our Asian neighbors have all progressed and prospered, while our poor and destitute continue to live lives of misery, hoping only for a chance to escape. Those who are able go through all kinds of difficulties just to have the opportunity to leave and they leave in staggering numbers.
More than a million Filipinos try their luck each year to work abroad through overseas employment agencies and other programs, including government-sponsored initiatives. A majority of them are women applying as domestic helpers and personal service workers. Others emigrate and become permanent residents of other countries. Overseas Filipinos often work as doctors, physical therapists, nurses, accountants, IT professionals, engineers, architects, entertainers, technicians, teachers, military servicemen, seafarers, students, caregivers, domestic helpers and maids. It just seems that anywhere is better than the Philippines; hence we see this continuing exodus of our countrymen.
Although this phenomenon came to light in the sixties with the so called “brain drain” wherein our doctors, nurses, teachers and other professionals immigrated mostly to the US in numbers alarming enough to be of concern; but the truth is our elite, and other adventurous individuals have been going abroad since the time of Spanish colonization.
At that time their destination of choice was Europe; mostly to Spain because the Philippines was her colony and Spanish was also the language of our Filipino “illustrados”. The “illustrados” of the late nineteenth century were our intelligentsia like our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal who did not go abroad to find employment but rather exposure to the European culture by living in the major cities like Madrid, Paris, London, Rome and Berlin. Others pursued higher education in the famous universities of Europe and in the process imbibing deeply of the European advances in their cultures.
These “illustrados” were supported by generous allowances from the Philippines and came from the wealthy class of landowners. They paid their own way, and moved in the elitist circles of European gentlemen and considered themselves Spanish subjects though their presence in Madrid was to seek political reforms in the Philippines and they advocated for Philippine representation to the Spanish Cortes.
These “illustrados” were our first overseas Filipinos. In Madrid back in the late nineteenth century, they were only a handful; compare that now with about fifty thousand legal Filipino workers in Spain. It is estimated that there are about three hundred thousand people of total or partial Filipino origin which is 0.7% of the entire Spanish population. Most of these workers are in the service industry as domestics and in the tourism industry as hotel and restaurant workers. Tourism is Spain’s biggest source of revenue.
When the Americans came and occupied the Philippines after a brief war with Spain, the United States and the Philippines began a relationship that would continue to this day, even after our independence over sixty years ago. The United States have become the favored destination of many Filipinos seeking new lives either through family sponsored immigration or work petitions. It estimated that there are four million Filipino-Americans; enough even to make Tagalog the fifth most spoken language in the United States.
The first Filipino workers to go to the United States were fifteen Ilocano “manongs” who were recruited from the fields of Ilocos in 1906 to work the sugarcane plantations of Hawaii. In the following years more workers came not only to Hawaii but also to the agricultural areas of Northern California. In California, Filipino-Americans are the dominant minority group after the Mexicans.
Now, Filipino-Americans comprise the second largest Asian minority group in the US and most California cities hold sizable Filipino-American communities: from San Diego in the south to Sacramento in the north. But it is not only in Hawaii and California that Filipinos have migrated to. They are present in all the fifty states including Alaska where they work mainly in the arduous fishing industry.
Filipino-Americans send the most dollars to the Philippines and last year they accounted for almost a fifth of all the total dollar remittances of close to twenty billion dollars. Every year, the growth of dollar remittances from both USA and Canada continue even through the worst period of the American recession. It is predicted that this year despite the continuing economic difficulty in the United States, our Filipino-Americans will be sending more dollars back home and of course more balikbayan boxes.
No where has the success of Filipinos been as pronounced as in the United States: second and third generations of Filipino-Americans gaining the top, excelling in many varied fields of endeavor. We have lost these Filipinos to the better lives America has to offer and after realizing the American dream for themselves, they want this for their children too.
Filipinos continue to leave for the United States and over forty thousand are legal immigrants to this favored destination every year. Rarely would Filipino-Americans come back to this country. Many do not want to especially after seeing what life in the Philippines is like. They simply chose to forget and assuage the pangs of conscience with their regular dollar remittances and the “balikbayan” boxes for the holidays. But we cannot blame them. Wanting a better life is everyone’s desire.
But almost a world away, in the cities built on the barren deserts of the Middle East; in a land of a much stranger culture, we find more than two million Filipinos working to support their families back home. In fact, Filipinos have helped build the modern cities of the Middle East countries, like Riyadh, Dhahran and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia: Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and Doha in Qatar also an Arabian Gulf State.
It was the new found oil wealth of the Arab countries of the Middle East that fueled the construction frenzy in the seventies after the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-74 raised the price of oil to unprecedented highs. This oil embargo was imposed on the West (mainly the US) in retaliation for their support for Israel, in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War known as the Yom Kippur War.
And though the Arab attacks on Israel were eventually repulsed and the Egyptian and Syrian armies came close to the point of annihilation, the West saw the Arab oil embargo raise the prices of crude oil to unprecedented highs. The Arab oil exporting countries found themselves with vast amounts of cash from their oil and a new sense of power over the oil dependent Western world, including the mighty United States.
The Arab oil wealth translated into an over night construction boom. By the mid seventies foreign contractors holding construction contracts in the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia started recruiting workers from the Philippines. Other countries followed suit like Kuwait, Iraq, even Libya where many Filipino workers were employed in their oil industry.
Eventually these Middle East countries would hire Filipinos to work in other industries besides construction to include medical professionals, administrative and clerical workers, managers and consultants, tourism industry workers but the largest number of workers employed in these countries are the domestic helpers, our women who willingly faced hardships, loneliness and indignities just so they could earn a living and hope for a future. TO BE CONTINUED
