Diasporic Filipinos

Stumbled on this essay. Some interesting propositions. An excerpt:

Firstly, the problem with the diaspora as an imagined community is that, unlike the traditional nation-state, the diasporic population often fails to constitute a viable body politic; more than just difficulty in imagining itself as possessing real political power, the Filipino diaspora also has a historical susceptibility to marginalization, either in the home country or the adopted one. This sense of liminality often creates dangerous slippages. The Flor Contemplacion episode is one such instance. Here, the Philippines’s attempts to secure mercy on one of its citizens (a domestic helper), accused of murder and sentenced to death, in Singapore in the mid-1990’s offers the grossest example of the discrepancy between the home country’s ability to extend ancillary support to its migrant population(s) and the material reality of dislocation that puts the OFW subject beyond the tentacles of the State. Similarly, the reports of employer abuse, sexual harassment, and discrimination puts the OFW in a curious, and dangerous, position — one in which the State is both responsible and helpless.

Filipina Migrant Wives and Sacrifice

From Lieba Faier's "On being oyomesan: Filipina migrants and their Japanese families in Central Kiso", a grounded insight:

For most of the women I met, being oyomesan meant managing two sets of domestic obligations - to both their natal and their affinal households. These women often spoke to me about the toll taken on them by these dual pressures of home...While the difficulties these women faced could be onerous, they also invoked them as evidence of the hardships they were willing to endure to be good family members. For example. many Filipina women in Central Kiso invoked a Catholic rhetoric of self-sacrifice to describe the ways that by fulfilling their roles as oyomesan they both negotiated their relationships with their Japanese in-laws and supported their families in the Philippines. Such discourses of sacrifice and suffering are heavily gendered in the Philippines.

...She sometimes described her relationship with her husband's paretns as 'my trials'; other times, however, she would ask rhetorically in Tagalog of her Filipino family's persistent requests for money and household items...Hanggang kailan? Such a statment might be understood not only as questioning how long Cora's family in the Philippines would expect her financial support but also as a query of broader global political economics...Cora's question thus might also be glossed: until when will the unequal political-economic relationships that force people in the Philippines to depend on remittances from foreign labor migrants for daily subsistence be allowed to persist?

Defective Filipinos and Values-formation for Migrants

“Filipinos suffer from a cancer, a cancer that starts here and that we take with us abroad, a cancer that needs to be cured even before you leave. Values, priorities, beliefs, attitudes: this is defective in the Pinoy.”

- Instructor, Pre-departure Orientation Seminar, POEA

Quote lifted from Robyn Magalit Rodriguez' Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World.


This kind of 'values-formation' training has been fully internalized by Pinoy expats here. It seems to me that the psychology of the Benign0 school of thought is a complex mix of love and hate.

Interesting.

Exporting Labor

A new typology in an era of transnationalized "flexible" labor is emerging in literatures as varied as sociology, anthropology, economics, international studies and political science. Scholars have called it the "labor-exporting state." Robyn Magalit Rodriguez calls it the "labor brokerage state."

In Migrants for Export she writes:

"Labor brokerage is a neoliberal strategy that is comprised of institutional and discursive practices through which the Philippine state mobilizes its citizens and sends them abroad to work for employers throughout the world while generating a profit from the remittances that migrants send back to their families and loved ones in the Philippines. The Philippine state negotiates with labor-receiving states to formalize outflows of migrant workers and thereby enables employers around the globe to avail themselves of temporary workers who can be summoned to work for finite periods of time and then returned to their homeland at the conclusion of their employment contracts."

It may well be that the period of migration-for-settlement is coming to an end. In the United States, by far the world's largest migrant-receiving nation, the debate rages whether they should expand their "guest-worker" programs. This would allow flexible labor in but would deny citizenship."Guest-worker" or contractual labor programs have long been the practice in the Middle East, the Asia Pacific and recently in Europe. Citizenship confers political rights. Temporary worker status does not. Should this trend continue, increased precariousness of immigrant workers should be expected.

In the literature on international migration the Philippines is considered the most organized labor-exporting state in the world. And there is evidence that our state institutions and practices are being copied elsewhere. As yet, there is no global regime that would oversee "trade in workers" as the WTO does trade in commodities and investments. But it is not improbable. As the Doha Round finds the WTO regime at an impasse, a spate of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements have been inked. In some cases they include provisions for worker mobility, as with the recently inked Australia-ASEAN-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement.

(Blogwatch) Remitting love in a time of global recession

In sterile, technical language, what the finance bureaucrats are reporting this month basically means love trumps global financial crises. “Notwithstanding concerns over sovereign-debt problems in some European countries, remittances from overseas Filipinos continued to show strength amid the gradual recovery of the global economy,” says the governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. From January to April this year, $5.9 billion worth of love poured in the country, 6.6 percent more than the same period last year. Standard & Poor's, a company that assesses the credit-worthiness of countries, is essentially saying remittances comprise a force-field protecting the country from "global turbulence."

Read the rest at the Philippine Online Chronicles.

Mobile Reproductive Labour

Now that foreign women are doing much of domestic work in countries all over the globe, perhaps the "domestic" will now cross into the realm of the public domain. The person cooking, cleaning and doing the laundry is, after all, no longer mommy, auntie or older sister. It is a Filipina, a Bangladeshi, an Indonesian, an African. And of course a foreign worker could not be bound by invisible ties of love, filial or maternal duty to provide the gift of free service. She must be compensated. And as an autonomous provider of domestic work now commodified, is surely as deserving of rights and protections as one who labours in traditional sectors of the economy.

Providers of reproductive labour - that is, labour necessary to "reproduce" life - now comprise half of the world's migrants to date. The kind of work women do in many societies has traditionally not been accounted for in the measure of productivity. But as women in rich, industrialized countries continue to move from domestic spaces to participate fully in the labour force, someone still has got to take care of hearth and home.

As more and more women seek their fortune by taking care of the children and the elderly of countries not theirs, they suffer a double handicap. First, they have neither the privileges nor the rights conferred by their nationality. Second, the very nature of their work, bounded by the veil of privacy of the home, makes abuse all but a foregone certainty.

For more information, read the Human Rights Watch report on the "Protection of Migrant Workers in Asia and the Middle East."

-----

Read also:
Fruits of Her Labour

Unpacking Choice and Reproductive Rights

Temporal, Spatial

A useful measure of one’s ‘nationalist’ fervour is the degree to which one can imagine a future in this country. To imagine one building a career, making investments in solid purchases – such as a house, giving birth and raising children in this locality. Imagining a future here, and making a living here, gives one a stake in wrestling the order of things to hew closer to what an imagined good life would be. To commit to the future of this country, one will logically take pains to question why the existing order is as it is – dysfunctional at best, mercenary at worst.

Recently a former student of mine asked for my counsel, having passed the initial phase of the Foreign Service Exam and offered a place to study in a uni in Australia. I asked him what he thought would make him happy. Either choice will land him overseas anyway. If he does make it to become part of the diplomatic corps, they will probably send him to a hardship post in the Middle East, after serving the requisite first four years in the country. I asked him if he would return to the Philippines after his studies in Melbourne. I didn’t get a definitive answer. I have countless friends now either working or studying overseas. Some are quite adamant about returning home eventually. Yet time tends to tick past without us noticing, and eventually will be deferred according to the exigencies of the present.

My friends and peers (as with countless relatives who have long uprooted), share something in common. They can no longer imagine a future in this spatiality. It is a given that they see a paucity in opportunities – economic, self-advancement, growth, security. They would come home every so often to visit – much as one would to parents after having flown the coop. They do so to catch up with old friends and pay homage to the Philippine sun and scenery. One friend, who must make a spectacular living as a pharmacist in Canada, is here very four, five months. To my mind, her homeland has become a Disneyland of sorts – a theme park to while time away for some rest and relaxation. Her Facebook account is full of photos of her travels – a one-woman walking tourist catalogue. Her adoration for her country of birth is without question. But as they say, one cannot live on love alone.

I once taught in a university in Intramuros. The student body, one might say, reflect the mind set of the Filipino Every Person. Many of my students have either one or both parents working overseas. My salary literally came from the blood and sweat of migrant labour. All they want, it seemed, was to earn a degree so they could up and leave. Of the tens of thousands churned out by our tertiary education mills, how many imagine a future here? How many bide their time so they can have a chance at realising a model life they imagine over the horizon? How many grapple with feelings of doom as everyone they know leave ahead of them?

Marocharim has expressed a need for narrative to fully describe the Filipino’s migrant experience. Whatever the motive word might be, it should be book-ended by two kinds of crisis – one of temporality and one of spatiality. All polities (i.e. political communities) share two things in common - an uninterrupted timeline to connect past, present and future – all to unfold in a single space. What we may be experiencing is a disintegration of both. Here the archipelago floats, bits and pieces eaten away by the Pacific.

Migrant Workers are Not Commodities

To add to the official discourse of governements meeting in the Global Forum on Migration and Development kicking off today, this is the declaration of the parallel civil society forum I attended last week, the People's Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights. Also read the Madrid Declaration during the 3rd World Social Forum on Migrations.

Peoples’ Global Action Declaration

on Migration, Development and Human Rights

Submitted to the Global Forum on Migration and Development - Manila, Philippines, 27 October 2008

A world of migrants

There are over 250 million people in the world today that are in various conditions of being a migrant. Throughout human history people have been migrants or descended from migrants – with the exception of indigenous peoples residing in their ancestral lands.

There are many root causes of migration, including armed conflict, persecution, discrimination, poverty, underdevelopment, forced displacement, environmental destruction, and a search for family unity. And in the last decades, migration flows have been intensified because of neoliberal, corporate-centered globalization such as that promoted by the World Trade Organization (WTO), including free trade agreements, reduction in publicly-provided social reproductive services, and the expansion of the rights of business, have created wealth for economic elites but have consistently widened the gap between rich and poor and deepened vulnerabilities of individuals and communities.

While hugely profiting from the labor of migrants, the majority of countries in the world, have continuously adopted anti-migrant policies through scapegoating migrants for all social ills and perceived threats to national security. The adoption of simultaneous policies of being ‘open’ but at the same time ‘closed’ to migrants have led to the increased fragmentation of the working class, heightened insecurities for all migrants especially those in the grey zones like exiled peoples, amplified racial discrimination, and worsened the vulnerability to abuse and exploitation by organized crimes and corrupt officials, especially among women migrants. Meanwhile, the re-emergent emphasis on state-centered security as developed states secure their economic privilege has sharpened territorial divisions and pre-border surveillance as well as strengthened inward looking governance especially since the so-called ‘war on terror’ was unleashed.

The GFMD’s “migration and development” paradigm does not go far enough in affirming the human dignity of migrants and migrant workers, firmly placing their inalienable rights at the center of development and addressing their myriad insecurities. Moreover, such paradigm calls for the rendering of female migrant labor in specific gendered ways and is thus likely to reinforce inequalities between men and women.

Instead, the GFMD seeks to create an international migration regime that manages temporary workers for the benefit of global production and profit while at the same time institutionalizing more coercive and restrictive migration policies that penalize and lump together as one undesirable group all so-called ‘irregular’, ‘undocumented’ workers and all other migrants who fall in the grey zone.

As well, civil society including migrants’ organizations, trade unions, women’s organizations, and others have been severely restricted in their participation in GFMD debates, while the role of banks, financial intermediaries, and the corporate sector has been enhanced.

Obviously, the GFMD is not about respecting migration as a human activity in all of its varied forms, nor is it about protecting the rights of migrants and of workers. It is certainly not about realizing development for the majority of the world’s poor. Simply put, the GFMD is about protecting the security of states and markets. The GFMD and other new forums have been vigorously promoted, funded and controlled by developed countries together with a handful of developing countries. The result has been to further undermine an already weakened United Nations system where developing countries at this time stand a better chance of representation and participation.

Our challenge to governments attending the GFMD

Governments hold mutual obligations and responsibilities to respect, protect, fulfill, and promote the human rights of all peoples, migrants and workers everywhere included. In this regard, governments must ensure that the core UN and ILO conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and human rights treaties, including the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, ILO Conventions 97 and 143,and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and ILO rights-based Multilateral Framework on Labor Migration are enforced at every level.

Governments have also been called on “to protect the vital core of human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfillment” especially in dealing with issues of conflict, poverty and migration (Commission on Human Security 2003).

Governments must not deviate from but rather build upon the normative rights-based framework-approach to development. We recall Chapter 1 of the Declaration on the Right to Development (UNGA Resolution 41/128, 4 December 1986) - “The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized.”

Governments must ensure the genuine and meaningful participation of migrants and other stakeholders in international discussions on migration policy, and migration and development.

Governments must not differentiate between ‘regular’ or ‘irregular’ migrant workers in respecting migrants and workers rights. Regardless of their status, migrants are participants in contributors to and members of the community and country in which they live and work.

Governments must ensure that migrants enjoy equality of rights and non-discrimination in the places where they live. Discrimination based on any status, including national origin, nationality, migration status, race, gender, sexual orientation, religiousbelief and language, is prohibited by international law and human rights principles. Governmental policy must also address de facto discrimination (unequal conditions), and promote empowerment and equity for migrants.

Governments must protect and uphold the human rights of women migrants as subjects within a gendered history and context of migration. The vicious cycle of ‘poverty – human trafficking – poverty’ denies poor women their basic rights including the right to decent work and the right to security and justice. Policies aimed at curbing trafficking must address its myriad root causes and avoid pushing vulnerable women into deeper exploitation and abuse.


Governments must cease its implementation of state migration policies that constitute or cause violations of human rights. These include policies that: deny migrant workers decent work and the protection of their basic rights as workers; criminalize migrants, including the criminalization of migrants with irregular status; militarize borders and externalize migration control in international waters or in countries of origin and transit; discriminate against migrants based on nationality or migratory status; enforce collective deportations and deportations which violate any human right, including right to protection of the family, due process of law, right to security of person, and the principle of non refoulement; allow for arbitrary detentions and arrests, and all other deprivations of liberty of migrants in contravention of international standards on detention including on the reasons, conditions, procedures, and allowable time period of detention; and policies that fail to prevent and eliminate the exploitation and abuse of migrants, including trafficking of persons.

Governments must institute a functioning international system with migration and development policies that guarantee the human rights of migrants, workers, and all peoples, and promotes sustainable, rights-based development. This requires that forums for multilateral discussions on migration and development policies ensure genuine civil society participation. It also requires that all developing country governments have equal participation and voice.. Governments in the South should not adopt policies or enter into agreements with Northern countries that increase forced migration of its population, such as free trade agreements, Neither should they make any multilateral or bilateral agreements that that does not fully respect and protect the human rights of migrants, such as many repatriation, border control, and temporary labor agreements. We call on governments to respond to these challenges and fulfill its obligations, and create new global mechanisms and processes that are genuinely democratic, transparent and accountable and which will meaningfully ensure each individual’s human rights, freedoms and sustainable development.

Endorsed by the Philippine Working Group

Akbayan, Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL), ASEAN Trade Union Council (ATUC), Asian Migrant Center (AMC), Asian Migrant Domestic Workers Alliance (ADWA), Atikha, Batis Center for Women, Building and Wood Workers International, Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP), Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), Asia Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development (APWLD), Coalition Against Trafficking in Women-Asia Pacific (CATW-AP), Coalition for Migrants Rights (CMR), Daughters of Charity, Focus on the Global South, Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), Global Network Asia, International Gender and Trade Network-Asia (IGTN), Jubilee South-Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development, KAKAMMPI, Kanlungan Center Foundation, Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA), National Union of Building & Construction Workers/BWI, Philippine Consortium on Migration and Development, Public Services International (PSI/PSLINK), Save the Children-UK, Solidaritas Migran Scalabrini-Philippines, Stop the New Round, UNI-PLC/UNI-APRO, Unlad Kabayan Migrant Services Foundation, Women and Gender Institute-Miriam College (WAGI), Women Legal Bureau (WLB).

The Core UN Conventions are:

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) 1965
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 1966
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) 1966
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)1979
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) 1984
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) 1989
International Convention on Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICMRW) 1990
International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPAPED) 2005
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) 200

Speak for the Subaltern

It's a short clip, but devastating nonetheless. In less than sixty seconds the BBC comedy show Harry & Paul normalises, even trivialises the hardships, indignity and abuses suffered by many Filipina migrants abroad.Domestic helpers have rights too. Speak for the subaltern. Sign this petition.

Ninotchka Rosca

First, the name. What a journalist would give to have been born with a name like that. Its intriguing. Is it a man or a woman? Is s/he Russian-Spanish? Romanian (for the perfect blend of Slavic and Latin)? Then Butch tells me she used to be Joma Sison's lover and wrote his biography. My interest was piqued. The lover of the Communist Party's exiled leader who was imprisoned during the Marcos regime. For someone who was born after the First Quarter Storm, I have no memory of Rosca. All I know of her was her article on Ambassador Lauro Baja which came out on the front page of the Inquirer a week ago. A follow up, adds a bit more credibility to her story.

When her first story came out, I thought, wow this person must have balls to write something that could potential destroy a decorated diplomat's legacy. But then looking at Rosca's own achievements, her credentials are nothing to scoff at.

Ah, yet another one of our own, lost to the world, and found again through the www.

Rosca blogs here.

The Saudi-Filipino Democratic Deficit

How bizarre the transnationalised Filipino experience. Speaking with some colleagues over at the Polsci department, I learned that the Ghanan and Nigerian hackers my old company battled with everyday may have come all the way to the Philippines to train. Apparently, our people provide world-class cyber criminal expertise. So there I was, a Filipino policing our sites - trying to watch out for transnational prostitution and pedophilia, working with a staff from all corners of the globe, battling with Africans who may have been trained in Southeast Asia. Whew.

Last week I found out about this Arab News article written by Abdullah Al-Maghlooth praising Filipinos in Saudi Arabia. Red's Herring posted the item at Filipino Voices. Al Maglooth writes:

Saudi Arabia has the largest number of Filipino workers — 1,019,577 — outside the Philippines. In 2006 alone, the Kingdom recruited more than 223,000 workers from the Philippines and their numbers are still increasing. Filipinos not only play an important and effective role in the Kingdom, they also perform different jobs in countries across the world, including working as sailors. They are known for their professionalism and the quality of their work.

Nobody here can think of a life without Filipinos, who make up around 20 percent of the world’s seafarers. There are 1.2 million Filipino sailors.

So if Filipinos decided one day to stop working or go on strike for any reason, who would transport oil, food and heavy equipment across the world? We can only imagine the disaster that would happen.

In an exercise of futurology, let us imagine a Saudi Arabia without its 1 million Filipino workers. More importantly, what would this absolute monarchy look like without all of its 6-7 million migrant labour? The symbiotic relationship between the Kingdom's foreign workers keeping the balance and stability of the Saudi society will be broken.

If migrant labour were to leave en masse, nobody will be left to man Saudi industries. The co-opted middle class - all feeding off the riches of the Saudi rentier state - will be galvanised into action. There will be mass discontent among the likes of Mr. Al-Maghlooth as he is forced to really work hard for his living. Social forces - i.e. the nascent working and middle classes as well as civil society types best embodied by (moderate) Islamists - will be unleashed to topple the Saudi political tyranny. The reign of King Abduallah and his 10,000 or so princes will come to an end. Saudi Arabia, doubtlessly the political linchpin of the Middle East, and the geo-economic linchpin of the world, will finally join the twenty-first century.

A democratic Saudi Arabia will probably try to gain better control of its oil industries, and may have some ambition to unite the fragmented heart of Islam. For this to happen, all of the Arab world's migrant labour will also have to leave. The GCC alone has most of its nationals working for their States - highlighting the fact that there are no independent social forces to challenge the State's supremacy.

External powers, however, will not sit idly by and allow such events to happen. Superpowers to West and the East will make sure that all of the Middle East do not do another Iran.

Ha. So. Imagine a world without migrant Filipinos.

Liquid, Liquefied and the Diaspora to the Rescue

Emmanuel of IPE Zone points the massive outflow of portfolio investments from the Philippines this month. He hearkens it to the Asian financial crisis of 1997. To 'counter' the net exit of hot money, the Filipino Diaspora tops last year's first quarter record by 14.5 percent. It is amazing to me how the multitude of Filipinos labouring overseas - unnamed and unmobilised, can nevertheless mount a unified response. Imagine the thousands of phone calls from family coursing through networks of telecommunications all over the globe. A mother complaining about the soaring prices of food at the palengke. A brother asking his kuya to send 10 percent more for his tuition this June. Buffeted by formless enemies, the Diaspora, just as formless, comes to the rescue.


For a backgrounder on the 21st century's 'Casino Capitalism', read:
Taming Capitalism
Dependency, Debt and the End of Resistance

Also, Kenneth Surin's explanation, written a decade ago, is just as salient today.

"Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we therefore take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face "No admittance except on business." Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit making (Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. 1.)"

Remit, Vomit

More comforting reads for the weekend.

"We find that the data confirms the countercyclical nature of remittances, which is consistent with the model's implication that remittances are compensatory transfers. In addition, we also find that remittances are negatively associated with economic growth. This result is also consistent with our model, in which remittances are subject to significant moral hazard problems that increase the likelihood of poor economic performance. Together, these results imply that remittances do not act like a source of capital for economic development, at least for now, and moreoever that there are significant obstacles to transforming them into a signifant source of capital (Chami, Fullencamp & Jahjah 2003: 5)

Edited to add:

"The prospect of converting remittances to development capital is even more daunting if we think of immigrant remittances as returns to flows of human capital across national boundaries. Immigrant remittances can be thought of as dividends from human capital assets invested by the family in economies where their return is relatively high. In other words, sending members abroad may already represent the family's main investment project, which has a much higher return than investment opportunities at home, including human capital investment. If this is the main motivation behind migration, then it implies that remittances are intended to be a main source of family income and will be devoted primarily to consumption...The dependency on these transfer induces recipients to use remittances as a substitute for labour income, and to lower their work effort. (22)."

"Governments, too, may succumb to a moral hazard problem created by the receipt of remittances...remittances provide a major source of foreign exchange for many countries. In the absence of remittances, it is likely that many countries' exchange rates, and in turn their domestic economic policies, would come under (greater) pressure. But the receipt of large remittance flows removes or mitigates this pressure. Therefore, the government may be able to ignore imbalances in the domestic economy and avoid taking politically costly steps to address them. At worst, governments could intentionally pursue politically beneficial but economically unwise policies, in the expectation that remittance flows will continue to insulate the domestic economy from any negative consequences. Such policies would likely exacerbate the conditions that led to large-scale migration and remittance transfer, leading to heavier dependence on immigrant remittances and decreased effort on the part of domestic workers, firms and entrepreneurs (23)."


Chami R., Fullencamp C. & Jahjah S. (2003). "Are Immigrant Remittance Flows a Source of Capital for Development?" IMF Working Paper WP/03/189.

For Filipinos At Home and Overseas

There is a dearth of scholarship about the Philippines in IR. But when it comes to the globalisation of labour movements, we are a star. Heaps upon heaps of free publications in the ILO website. Don't stick to that web page alone. Explore!

Here is an excerpt of the paper I'm working on at the moment. Enjoy.

This paper seeks to examine the dynamics of today’s human movements within the context of globalisation. Globalisation is here broadly defined as a set of processes which embodies a transformation in the spatial organisation of social relations and transactions - generating flows and networks of activity and modifying the exercise and loci of power. Its dimensions include a stretching of social, political and economic activities across frontiers, an intensification of interconnectedness, a speeding-up of global interactions and a magnified impact of distant events to local ones. These ‘flows’ include people, symbols and information across space and time. ‘Networks’ are the regularised or patterned interactions of agents.

The first part explores the theoretical frameworks within which migration today is studied and interpreted. Also, what are the various socio-economic determinants of human movements today? The second part frames migration within the context of the globalisation of production. As the more mobile factors of production, i.e. capital, globalised, was there a consequent pressure for labour to ‘go global’ as well?

Thirdly, what are the political implications of migration today? It will be shown that while the logic of contemporary capitalism generates pressures for people to migrate, it must necessarily engage the socio-cultural and political ‘discreteness’ of nation-states. The notions of ‘identity,’ ‘citizenship’ and ‘justice’ become increasingly problematic as the ‘national’ becomes more fluid. In contrast to the regulation of other kinds of flows – capital, ideas (intellectual property rights), commodities and certain forms of services, why has labour movement become difficult to include in the World Trade Organisation’s regime? Or indeed, in any other kind of multilateral agreement? At what cost do societies today forgo such regulation? And what has happened to the ‘boundaries’ of social justice?

Lastly, we examine the impact of labour movements on development. Remittances increasingly become important capital flows. According to World Bank estimates, migrants sent $150 billion in remittances to their country of origin in 2004, reflecting an increase of fifty percent in only five years. What are the developmental impacts of such external financial sources to local development? Are they a form of compensation for human capital losses of those emigrating? And what of the impact of ‘brain drain’, the transfer of skilled human capital from developing countries to industrialising ones?

Pinoy Dies in the Outback

A Filipino OFW recently died under suspicious circumstances somewhere up in the Northern Territory. Three months into his work term, Pedro Balading's remains were found on the road as he was reportedly thrown off a speeding vehicle. His body was flown home in June.

Balading, along with 2 other Filipinos were reportedly targets of racial discrimination, abuse and were made to do tasks in violation of their 457 skilled worker visa. Another Pinoy was also killed last March as he was crushed by 2 slabs of granite in his workplace north of Perth. The Philippine embassy and the Australian government have called for review of said visa. Australia Malcolm Knox writes:

HIS body aching, his hands bristling with splinters, Pedro Balading phoned his wife Maria Magdalena on his 35th birthday and said he wanted to come home to Manila. The university-educated Filipino piggery supervisor had had enough of living a modern-day version of Wake In Fright in the Australian outback.

Instead of performing the skilled work prescribed by their visas, Balading and two Filipino co-workers on a cattle property on the Gulf of Carpentaria had become targets for bullying and discrimination, were underpaid and ordered to do back-breaking unskilled jobs.

The circumstances of his death remain the subject of an official investigation, but witnesses say that Balading's death resulted from the same harassment and exploitation that characterised his brief tenure in the territory.

Ten weeks after his death, his destitute and distraught widow has received no report on what killed Him and scant information on her entitlements, which include unpaid wages and accrued leave, workers' compensation and life insurance.

Territory and federal authorities have maintained a veil of secrecy around the death. Balading's employer has washed his hands of responsibility. When Maria Magdalena was notified of her husband's death two days after it happened, she wept: "Now they will let him come home."

In the Pinoy blogosphere, Geejay, himself a migrant worker here in Australia, writes:

Now, I’m not saying that all working conditions for migrants in Australia are as bad as what was depicted in the two articles. However, I just want to remind you, if you are interested in working here, to be extra vigilant. Don’t be lulled into thinking that working in Australia is without any risks. Do your homework and do not let yourself be abused. I strongly urge you to read the two articles in its entirety to get some ideas of what to watch out for.

From oodles of goodles:

There is just too much pent-up urgency in me to do something right about this. Perhaps, other than suggest that we boycott the agency which sent Balading to his death in a foreign land and send a barrage of furious email or letters to employers Paul and Stuart Zlotkowski, we can divert some of that passion, anger, unity we incited when Malu Fernandez made fun of OFWs and convert it into a microcosm of social relevance.

From sette:

It seems ironic that these days workplace reform, rights of workers and equality in the workplace are hot topics in the political arena and yet there are blatant breaches of overseas worker privileges in our own backyard.

Related news:
Foreign workers "enslaved"
Manila hits out on work visas
Hundreds ride the conveyor belt to fortune
Deaths prompt calls of 457 visa inquiry

The Philippines' 1st Cyber Counterculture Movement: Malu Fernandez, Hala Lagot Ka!

Has it been two weeks? Since Jae's post, and my first response to this issue, the Malu Fernandez blogging spectacle has taken on a life of its own. Every day, there are more pages on Google and Technorati when you search her. Congratulations Malu, you're now viral. I imagine your articles and the unfavourable (to put it kindly) reactions to your articles are now circling the globe over and over and over.

Anton De Leon, himself and OFW in Dubai, has called on us to "put on" the badges he made in support of the OFW Blogger's network. He is irked at Manila Standard Today's silence to this date. They have issued no statement other than publishing Malu's column on July 30, suggesting we're all ignorant twats. I've sent them heaps of e-mails as well, and as you can see, now their site crashes from time to time from heavy traffic. The Pinoy has reposted it here. De Leon suggests MST's silence may be because they don't want to ruffle VIP feathers. But he is optimistic the fight is far from over, it has only begun.

If you want to participate in (dare I suggest) the Philippines' first cyber counterculture movement, I say, put on the badges and let yourself be heard.

Tingog has posted the the official statement of the Filipino Press Club-Dubai. Here are some highlights:

A print medium that aspires for relevance in today’s competitive media world cannot hide under the skirt of press freedom for its licentiousness to insult a group of people. One’s freedom to poke her fingers begins where someone else’s nose begins.

Ms Fernandez’s unrepentant response to the barrage of angry reactions from OFWs and their loved ones (“I obviously write for a certain target audience and if what I write offends you, just stop reading”), simply adds fuel to the fire.

A nation like the Philippines that aspires for renewal and regeneration needs a responsible press with a high level of sensitivity to all sectors that comprise it.

We strongly demand that the publishers of People Asia and Manila Standard Today to take full responsibility and do the right thing: give Ms Fernandez and her editors a disciplinary action and apologise to the people insulted by these articles.

Elsewhere in the Pinoy blogsphere, people's latest reactions.

Sassy lawyer, herself an MST columninst says:

I tell you, there is nothing more useless and unreasonable as an angry, unthinking mob. And there is nothing more dangerous than a mob with an agendum—lest we forget, the Philippine blogging community is a medium too and hardly exempt from the mentality that anything goes if it translates to readership/audience.

Professional heckler lists some things one might say when one sees MF. The good bits:

9: “You’ve got more issues than PEOPLE Asia and the Manila Standard Today combined!”
8: “A sharp tongue does not mean you have a keen mind.”
7: “Do you still love nature, despite what it did to you?”
6: “If your conscience could be surgically removed, it would be a minor operation.”
4: “You are the reason God created the middle finger.”

A good point from a very angry luthien:

ang mga "hot money" inflows sa atin lumilikas kapag may mga market "shakes" like nitong nangyayaring US subrpime/credit crunch na nangyayari pero ang OFW remittances anjan pa rin, to keep our economy afloat.

Ivan Henares catalogues the growing list of bloggers on MF. He writes:

As a travel writer, I am unimpressed with her article. It does not give readers a sense of place of where she's been. Who cares if you used gold, open-toed sandals to climb the Acropolis? It's pathetic that the Hellenic attractions were only mentioned in passing. As a Filipino, I am appalled. How dare you call this country God-forsaken!

A truly tongue-in-cheek post from bananachoked:

Really, my heart goes to her and this she owes to me. For crying our loud, send me a bottle of the rare perfumes that you reviewed at the expense of the stinky overseas Filipino workers whose smell suffocated you. Let me try the ones you sprayed on your underarms to prevent the glands from sweating too much or the ones you put on your groin to avoid rashes.

Yveethetraveler posts the letter she sent to MST:

If your writer does not think she can bridge the gap between socioeconomic classes in our country, what may I ask, is her role in your paper? Of course I do not expect her to bridge gaps between our country’s social classes, but I do expect her to possess ethics appropriate for a journalist. Isn’t objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability included in a journalist’s principles?

Fleeting thoughts comments on the comments:

It’s so fun reading the outbursts of enraged people. No offense, I don’t mean to express amusement at any display of emotion, especially for something that is so sensitive but this kind of thing does not happen regularly in the open (for me, that is). In a world where people must observe some level of civility, outbursts like these can be really interesting.

Ingrid Holm writes:

Take this from a person with the same 'socio-economic background' as you, bitch. What a pitiful excuse. I also happen to read things 'thicker than magazines', I go to University in London where I will finish with an Honors Bachelors Degree in May. I have a 1 year Marketing Economics degree from a business school in Oslo, and I graduated with an International Baccalaureate Diploma at age 17, if you were wondering. So no fucking excuses. You could do so much more than you think, yet you choose to act like a proper twat. The kind of twat that people with some brains laugh at, the world over.

An interesting take from Gigo:

People from the "elite realm" (for lack of a better term) amuse me. They are sources of entertainment as much as circus freaks provide me with a dose of something so surreal, its an escape from the reality that I am in. There's just something about their lifestyle which is so monotonously spread out in sheets of lifestyle magazines, that I find really peculiar, it merits a few chuckle from time to time. Imagine flaunting the crevasses of your pockets, clad in chameleon clothes with engorged egos, striking it fierce in a photograph to be pasted on a magazine sold alongside substance- twenty sheets adorned with pictures of hunger, strife, discord, and dissatisfaction. That is irony "fabulousified" (excuse my French).

Related posts:
Putting on the Other's Shoes
The Democracy of the Pinoy Blogosphere a.k.a Malu Fernandez, Take Your Cue
Let Them Eat Cake
OFWs are No Heroes

OFWs Are No Heroes

Heroes put on the cape and fly off to save the world. Filipino migrant workers are no heroes, they're not invincible. Bullets won't bounce off their eye balls. You shoot them and they're dead. You lock them up in your house and they're chattel. You kidnap them, and hold hostage their passports and they're slave labourers, made to work 12 hours every day. OFWs are no heroes.

As I've written elsewhere I don't like the term "Bagong Bayani." It implies self-abnegation and dying for some cause. In the ascription of heroism to their decision to migrate, sacrifice for the national well-being is implied. But Filipino migrant workers do not leave the country to be "heroes." They leave to provide for their families - to put kids or siblings to school, to finance medical upkeep of parents and grandparents, to save up for investments back home. They are, according to new development language, the world's leading agents of economic development. Agency implies initiative. It implies making impacts through concrete actions.

Remittances world-wide have now surpassed ODA (official development assistance) of rich governments and FDI (foreign direct investment) of multinationals in terms of capital transfer to the developing world. The Philippines is the third largest remitting country in the world, after India and Mexico. It is first when you take account of the percentage of remittances relative to GDP. Imagine that.

Here is an excerpt of a recent paper we wrote about the Filipino Diaspora. Pardon the boring tone. Its academic, but hopefully not moot. :)

----------

Introduction

There are at present an estimated 8.2 million Filipino migrant workers in 193 countries and territories abroad (POEA 2006: 51). In the early 70s, the government’s migration policy was meant to be a temporary measure to ease the crunch of that era of global economic depression. Due to its success, labour export has become a permanent fixture in government policy (Opiniano & Castro 2006: 74).

In recent years, there has been a trend of increasing remittances from these migrants, steadily rising from $8.5 billion in 2004, $10.6 billion in 2005, to as much as $14 billion in 2006 (POEA 2006: 21, Lucas 2007). Total remittances from January to April of this year have already surpassed that of last year’s and so the trend of increasing money capital repatriation is expected to continue. $4.68 B (26% increase from the same period last year) (PDI 2007).

With 1 in 10 Filipinos abroad today, and their growing contribution to sustainable living conditions for their families, the impact of migration is evident in the lives of Filipinos. Government policies facilitating out-migration suggest this trend will continue in the future. Indeed these workers have been touted by the government as the “Bagong Bayani” or New Heroes.

A Framework

While history and survival has seen the diffusion of human populations across the planet, Messina and Lahav point out that migration as a politically-defined issue is a relatively modern phenomenon. Migration became politicised in the 19th century, along with the rise of territorially-bounded nation-states. Those living within the territory were conferred ‘nationality’ while those outside were ‘foreigners.’ International migration came to be defined as the movement of non-nationals across borders for purposes other than travel or short-term stay (2006: 1).

Theories to explain or find causal relations pertaining to international migration are summarised by Massey and co-authors (2006). The newness of the field in the social sciences as well as their relative lack of sophistication, according to the authors, lead governments and policy-makers to frame international migration using antiquated 19th century concepts, models and assumptions (2006: 34).

Here most people feel when OFWs and migrants leave the Philippines it is a national loss. Not necessarily. Wealth-creation in the Philippines has never been national. Because we failed to sustain national industries (I'm not addressing the fact that others still think this is key to capitalist development, I haven't decided yet OK?), wealth in the Philippines has always been created transnationally. If our few multinationals such as San Miguel or Jollibee can operate globally, why should we deprive workers the same right?

Agents of Economic Development

Pearce, Douglas & Wimaladharma (2004) defined remittances as sums of money that a migrant worker sends back to a migrant worker’s country of origin. Unlike foreign direct investment (FDI) by private or public commercial entities or official development assistance from donor countries (ODA), remittances reach the poor directly and the poor make direct decisions on how the monies are spent.

In one of the most comprehensive surveys of the Filipino Diaspora in recent years, Alburo and Abella (2002) show the evolution of the pattern of migration in the last decade and set some benchmarks on the “brain drain” phenomenon from the Philippines. Brain drain is defined as the emigration of skilled workers and professions. Whereas in the 70s, most labourers who migrate are low-skilled, the proceeding decades saw the exodus of health professionals such as doctors and nurses, and later electronic engineers, computer programmers, designers and others.

An important finding of Alburo and Abella’s study was that the number of professionals who left the Philippines in the last decade exceeded the number of those who joined the local labour force. In general Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) have higher educational attainment than those of the local labour force. There is also evidence that a large portion of Filipino workers abroad belong to the most productive age groups, ranging from 25 to 44, compared to those employed in the country.

Most of the Philippine literature concentrate on the impacts of remittances to the Philippine economy as well as the behaviour of remitting workers. This may be because the Philippines is the third highest net remittance recipient in the world, after India and Mexico. From 1980 to 2002, remittance to export earnings ratio rose from 4.5% to 24.2%, and remittance to GDP ratio from 0.6% to 13.5% (Tan 2006: 3-4). Remittances have also begun to overtake foreign direct investments and official development assistance as external sources of capital (Pernia 2006: 1). Pearce, Stanton and Wimaladharma (2004) now refer to remittances as the new development finance.

Remittances come from an estimated 4.5 million OFWs and more than 3.4 million permanent emigrants settled mostly in the US. A majority of the OFWs are young breadwinners. About 20% of them are single with financial obligations to parents and siblings. From 1998 to 2003, there was a much larger increase in permanent migration than for employment, however OFWs still outnumber migrant workers in number (Tan 2006: 3).

Remittances do not necessarily contribute to national development because they are not always spent on productive activities. There are three spending phases (Brinkerhoff 2006: 7):

1. family maintenance and housing improvement
2. conspicuous consumption
3. productive activities

Brain Drain to Brain Gain

The phenomenon of international migration is seen to continue as shown by a study conducted by the International Labour Organisation (Lowell & Findlay 2002). “Brain Drain” or skilled labour emigration is a concern because of its impact on the sending countries. A number of industrialised economies have liberalised their policies to admit highly skilled workers. The problem is that the demand for these workers is met by developing countries, triggering an exodus of their skilled personnel.

Kapur and McHale (2005) credit this “global hunt for talent” to three factors. First, the emerging knowledge-based industries push governments to increase their competitive advantage by hiring the right people. Second, ageing populations in industrialised countries also require more health care workers and technology-based health care systems. Third, this international competition for talent is seen to continue and increase due to the globalisation of production and trade. The five leading competitors for skilled talent in the international market are Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US (37).

To address the increasing out-migration of skilled professionals from developing countries, the Asian Development Bank recently published position papers on how to convert “brain drain” to “brain gain” (Westcott and Brinkerhoff 2006). The loss of skilled-labour migration is compensated by transfer of knowledge through the skills and training acquired abroad. These papers show evidence that skilled migration can prompt further investment in education.

Opiniano and Castro (2006) highlight the need for more brain gain programs. Some transfer of knowledge initiatives, such as the Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC), the Transfer of Knowledge Through Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN) sponsored by the UN Development Program and the Balik Scientist Program (Scientist Return Program) have largely been unsuccessful. They conclude that this is due to lack of awareness and importance of these programs.

Findings and Recommendations

Our findings from our survey match the current studies of the Filipino Diaspora. Corresponding to the data compiled by the POEA, where 2.7 of the estimated 8.2 million overseas Filipinos are located in the United States (2006: 52), the majority of our respondents are also located in the US.

The majority are citizens, contract workers or permanent residents aged 22 to 35 years old. We marked this age grouping as the most productive years for workers. It is roughly equivalent to Alburo and Abella’s age bracket of 25 to 44 years old (2002). The second largest group are those aged 36 to 50 years old. In total, those who are active participants of the labour force in their respective host countries represent 75% of our respondents.

Also matching areas of highest labour demand in the international labour market, 37% of our respondents are employed in the health care and information technology sectors.

Over half of our respondents left the Philippines in the period 2001 to 2007. The overwhelming majority of those who left did so for economic reasons. Sixty-eight percent held stable jobs before leaving. This supports prior studies that Filipino migrant workers are not only endowed with education and training but also practical experience when they join the work force of their host country.

Those who benefit from remittances are members of the immediate family – siblings and parents. The funds are spent on daily subsistence and education. This scenario may be indicative of the worsening social and economic condition of the Philippines, where income from the local economy is no longer enough to sustain even the most basic of needs. Spending on education, most likely of younger siblings, is a strong indicator that some of the funds are being re-invested on human capital. Following Brinkerhoff’s three spending phases (2006), this survey shows part of the funds is indeed being spent on productive activities. The Filipino Diaspora continues to provide a social safety-net to the immediate family. This is reflective of the lack of public social safety-nets available.

Although surprisingly 63.3% of them would not want to change their citizenship. Their qualitative responses reveal their definition of “better living conditions” mean financially or income-wise. They are better able to help relatives through financial support but “miss out on family-milestones” or “miss home.”

Advances in telecommunications facilitate linkages of overseas Filipinos to the Philippines. Over eighty percent say they keep up with current events, mostly through the online editions of Philippine newspapers and e-mail listings and networks.

The Philippine government has indicated little long-term planning in managing the emigration of workers. The emphasis seems to be in maximizing benefits - by way of remittances. However initiatives in minimizing costs are sorely lacking. This is excellent opportunity to conduct research on long-term management of human migration, focusing on brain gain mechanisms.

Conclusion

The survey results reflect the findings of current literature and trends. It shows the Filipino Diaspora has maintained linkages to the homeland. They feel they are helping and want to eventually come home. Over 63 percent do not want to change citizenship, indicating their strong emotional ties to keeping their Filipino identity.

Those who have given up their Filipino passports or those who are considering it, only do so for travelling and documentation convenience. If this survey reflects the attitudes of the 8.2 million, then evidence is strong that the Diaspora’s potential of being agents of economic development extend beyond the monetary. There must be policies to harness their potential in transferring home know-how as well as social and human capital.

On the Democracy of the Pinoy Blogosphere a.k.a Malu Fernandez, Take Your Cue

The Malu Fernandez brouhaha raging in the Pinoy blogosphere has been clearly infuriating to many of us. Typically Pinoy, some of the insanely humorous comments, expressing truly acerbic wit in so many blog posts have been good in diffusing the outrage. She has been hurled insults that have unfairly maligned animals of the porcine kind.

You will agree with me that this social space we are creating is predominantly middle class, reflecting our middle class values and our middle class sensibilities. Ms. Fernandez should take the cue that the society in which she lives is now ruled by a free market economy. We no longer live in society where privilege is taken for granted by the privileged because wealth creation is more transparent in the exchange of money. In plain words, being rich doesn't automatically make you our betters, so you need to tone down your disgust for the masses, at least in public. While admittedly there are vestiges of the old system, don't we want wealth as something acquired through hard work and merit? Not by socioeconomic rank and god forbid, birth? Don't you call yourself a working girl as well Ms. Fernandez? In any democracy, these values make you the same as me.

From Ms. Fernandez' column I take it she works in the fashion business, focusing on RTW. In her own words, her customers are not exactly haute ton (high society). Ms. Fernandez, while you may count yourself as part of the "jet-setting" crowd, your business clearly depends on the patronage of those with purchasing power. Who has purchasing power in the Philippines today? Obviously, the people who have written these posts - the Middle Class. And those of us with relatives working abroad who continue to infuse capital in this country. These are the very same people you have insulted in your ignorance. Of the billions of dollars they have sent home, $14 billion last year alone, I'm sure some of that has made its way to your purse Ms. Fernandez. And some have been used to buy the magazine and newspaper you write for. So yeah, enjoy your spritz of Jo Malone while you can. These days, being matapobre*, can be very bad for business.

*In Spanish, means kill the poor.


Edited to add:

Just to drive home the point, here are the latest hilarious/outraged posts via technorati.

From spanx:

PUNYETA pala itong MALU FERNANDEZ na ito eh, ang daming sinasabi, wala naman iniisip, t*ng 'na, lahat ng mga kapwa nating Pinoy na nagsusumikap sa Dubai, na-insulto mo.

Nagawa mo pa asarin lahat ng mas mahirap sa iyo. Eh kung i-forward itong mga pa-kyut mo sa http://www.alexboncayaobrigade.com/, matuwa ka pa kaya?...And do shut your trap before I go all Sun-Tzu on your fat ass.

From stevie:

As a backgrounder, Ms Fernandez has struggled with a weight problem since birth. She has tried everything. Obviously unsuccessful, Malu, single fortysomething, has just resorted to being a bitch to get noticed. Let's not spam her then.

From Manila Boy:

Even if the acerbic Ms. Fernandez tries to ignore all the hate mails and vehement blogs virtually chopping her up into liempo, all these intensely negative vibes will surely give her a very bad long weekend indeed.

From aika:

Truth, you say? Here’s a little glimpse of reality. The last time I checked, Philippines is a third world country and people struggle to at least eat three times a day. And some families do this by sending a family member abroad, doing whatever they can - including being miles away from their loved ones - just so their families here in the Philippines could live a freaking decent life. Here’s your reality: there’s nothing f*cking funny about that.

From Pedestrian Observer:

While Donya Buding is a class act and really a classy woman Malu Fernandez has no class, nada, zip, zilch so excuse me, comparing her to Donya Buding is the biggest insult ever. Fer cryin out loud she is not even in the calibre of a cartoon character like Miss Piggy what more with Donya Buding.

From shane:

At bakit hindi sya magrereklamo na masikip ang upuan, ang taba taba kaya nya. Kung ako sa kanya, magpapa-LIPO ako kay Vicky Belo or kay Pai Calayan!

From valkyrieangie:

puh-leeze. some people with lower socioeconomic background are better bred than you are. even if all they get to eat are noodles and rice to get by and you get to stuff yourselves with escargot and champignon (which is just the sosyal way of saying suso at kabute, noh). we may not be your target audience, we middle class people, but we can read and we know when we are being put down.

From azrael:

I am an OFW myself, and it hurts me big-time when a fellow pinoy looks down on me and judge me by mere affinity. It’s just not right. Besides, what’s wrong with selling celphones and perfumes at duty free shops? What’s wrong with using cheap ass perfumes like Axe and Charlie? What’s wrong with being loud and friendly with your fellow pinoys on a plane?? DAMMIT.. WHAT????

From jovi:

Miss… er… Blimp, I’ll have you know that I’ve read the unabridged versions of books like “Brothers Karamazov”, “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina”, “Les Miserables”, among others, and I think those can be considered thicker than a magazine but I still cannot, for the life of me, appreciate your so - called acerbic wit, but hey, maybe it’s just me.

From Filipinowriter:

Just because she feels that she can’t make a difference, doesn’t mean it’s a lost cause. The fact that people are actually trying is much more noble, than playing aristocrat and hinting that The Philippines is a lost cause.

Filipinos are Iraqis and Iraqis are Filipinos

Filipinos have a lot more in common with Iraqis than we might think. Sure, they are a predominantly muslim country while our own muslim brothers and sisters only number between 5% to 14% of the total population. We have no significant historical ties with them in past century or so (or to my knowledge, ever). It would probably never occur to an ordinary Filipino or an ordinary Iraqi for that matter, that they share an unfortunate common bond.

Flashback to a hundred years ago. A Philippines that had just won its war of independence from the Spanish colonial yoke of three centuries. A war that has brought a consciousness of a Philippines free from foreign rule. A war that has sparked in the people's imagination, a "Filipino." Free at last, our ancestors had probably thought. No more white people bossing us natives around, brandishing their superiority over us because, well, we have more melanin than them. And well, it is the order that God himself has designed. And yeah, they were ruling us and oppressing us for our own good.

But not long after the traces of the long-faded Hispanic imperialist power has left the Islands, comes a shining new and promising imperial power that was the United States. Come to free us from our own ignorance and well, to spread to us the hollowed teachings of their dead white male ancestors from a couple of centuries before. They came firepower ablazing, demolishing all sorts of resistance against the white American man's burden. They had come, thousands and thousands of miles away because, well, they just wanted to teach us democracy and give us education, the American way. They came, a foreign power that had killed and maimed as many as 600,000 Filipinos on Filipino soil, take all the reins of authority and then expect to teach us, benevolently, "freedom" and "democracy."

US occupation of the Philippine Islands numbered fifty years. A half century of, some might say, good vibes and good happenings for all us previously-uncouth little natives, while some, among them a Filipino scholar Onofre D. Corpuz, might say a half century of Americans profitting from monopoly commerce. If one cares to do a little bit of unearthing from our libraries, one will discover a plethora of American companies "invading" not long after the gunsmoke has cleared Philippine air. Oh, and not to mention the establishment of the biggest military base in the world outside of continental USA as an outpost for their paranoiac Cold War pissing contest against them Soviets hoolahbaloo.

A half century that saw us little brown brothers pledging allegiance to the American flag, learning the language if not the twang, copying everything American from the mode of dress to the mode of government. A half century that saw a massive flood of American goods to fulfill our Americanized wants and needs and desires. Because everything American was surely better than what our own backward country could ever make.

Some say ours was a tragic history of the local elites being coopted by imperialist conquerors. An elite chosen and installed in the high seats of power as the years went by and the American occupancy was about to hand us our "sovereignty." An elite that was schooled American, and shared real "interests" with anything and everything American.

Fast forward a hundred years to the present. Here come the Americans doing what they've gotten very good at. Smashing their nose in on other people's business and bullying anything and everything that comes in between. Here's a people minding their own business, albeit living in a repressive but otherwise harmless regime, bombed and invaded for no other reason than the American president and his business and political cohorts have got much to gain from doing so. George W. Bush comes from a family which has made its fortune in Oil. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. The United States is the largest oil consumer in the world, more than the next 5-6 combined. DUH. Any idiot can put two and two together.

But no, this simple equation has been muddied by the US government's hunting of imaginary weapons of mass destruction and counted on a paranoia of an American public whose collective memories still bore the image of two airplanes crashing into two very tall buildings.

And so each and everyday these days we see Iraqi militants killing and maiming white American soldiers who are tromping about, brandishing their expensive weapons, tanks and such, trying to "settle" US occupancy of Iraq. If you're an Iraqi living peacefully in your own neighborhood, saying your prayers five times a day, trying to raise your family in the best possible way you can see in the past year or so the death of thousands of your own countrymen, some of whom might even be family, will you stand idly by and do nothing?

Probably not. You'll do any means possible to get these American motherfuckers who've bombed your houses, businesses and countrymen, out of your own motherfuckingcountry. Even resort to kidnapping and threatening to behead (because you sure ain't got no smart bombs or computerized gadgets to fight back) "coalition forces" to get them the hell out of your borders.

Gawd. This is history in the making. And we're all standing by see such injustice unfold behind our eyes. We should hail Angelo de la Cruz as a hero. If only because he has single-handedly shown the Philippine government, the folly it has made in "supporting" (albeit with only 51 pencil-pushers) a war fashioned in American paranoia and profiteering.

Just you wait and see. There'll be billions of dollars to be made on Iraqi "Reconstruction." American corporations will come "invading" very soon after things get "settled," just like they did here a hundred years ago. But not if ordinary Iraqis, made militant by the injustice done them, could help it.

Why Arroyo Made the Right Choice on Philippine Pull-Out From Iraq

Randy David, a Filipino scholar and sociologist, says it all. Here is his article from today's Philippine Daily Inquirer:

WE can't expect America and Australia and all the other nations that supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, to understand the full complexity of President Macapagal-Arroyo's dilemma. To them, the choice is merely between giving in to the demands of Iraqi terrorists to save one overseas Filipino worker's life and keeping our troops in Iraq in order to honor an international commitment. Any self-respecting government, they say, would give priority to its commitments.

To appreciate the context of the President's decision to withdraw the Filipino troops in Iraq in exchange for the life of Angelo de la Cruz, one would have to take into account a few of the realities we face.

The first is the reality of the nation's collective guilt over the deployment of millions of its desperate citizens to various work sites in the world where it cannot protect them. Our government has called them "modern heroes," in recognition of the billions of dollars they send home every year. But this compliment hardly repays the social costs that they must often bear in the form of broken lives and dysfunctional families. The OFW phenomenon has produced a thick residue of resentment that weighs heavily upon relationships within both the Filipino family and the nation as a whole. Every tragedy in the OFW family becomes an occasion for the release of this resentment. Every publicized misfortune of an OFW abroad is potential ground for a Flor Contemplacion convulsion. Neither Francis Ricciardone nor Jay Leno would know this.

The second is the reality of an unexplained foreign policy of intervening in a distant war without a strong moral and legal warrant. True, in the past, most Filipinos automatically took the side of America, wherever its superpower adventurism went. But that was when they knew no other country but the United States. Today the Middle East is a place of work for more than one million Filipinos. Ten million of our people live and work in more than 150 countries. Our foreign policy cannot ignore this reality. Loyalty to America will be measured inevitably against the dangers our own nationals face when they are perceived as citizens of an enemy nation. De la Cruz's town mates may not understand the whys and wherefores of George W. Bush's war, but they will immediately see the folly of a President who recklessly gambles the lives of her own citizens just to please America.

And the third is the reality of a politically insecure President who has the unenviable task of explaining and justifying the Philippines' continuing involvement in a war that a growing number of Americans now consider unnecessary. Since the May 10 elections, we've had in our country a volatile situation in search of a spark. The President's victory at the polls remains shrouded in doubt. While the nation slept, Ms Arroyo's allies in Congress hurriedly proclaimed her the winner on the basis of certificates of canvass that many think have been doctored. She won big in three provinces but lost in most of the regions of the country, including Metro Manila. The last thing she needs today is an incident that can explode into a crisis of legitimacy. The decision to pull out the troops from Iraq is as much about saving the presidency of Ms Arroyo as it is about saving the life of De la Cruz.

The convergence of these three political and sociological realities-an unjustified war, a helpless Filipino OFW, and a politically insecure President-lends a unique quality to this crisis. The situation would have been different if the victim had not been an OFW but a member of the Filipino peacekeeping contingent. There would still be loud calls to withdraw the troops, but the government would not have felt as strongly pressured. Similarly, if De la Cruz's abductors had demanded not the withdrawal of Filipino troops but, say, the release of Abu Sayyaf members from Philippine prisons, the government's response would have been a firm rejection of the demand. And finally, if Ms Arroyo's victory in the May 10 polls had been more convincing-if her legitimacy had been stronger-I believe she would have risked a momentary slide in popularity at home to please America.

Ms Arroyo's foreign critics are thus being too harsh when they call her a weak and indecisive President. Had she ignored the demand of the Iraqi extremists, she would now be facing a full-blown popular uprising from which even George W. Bush would not be able to rescue her. The neo-conservatives in the United States may feel aggrieved over this small setback in their Iraq strategy, but they ought to know that Ms Arroyo remains their staunchest and most loyal ally not only in the Philippines but in the entire region. Unfortunately for us Filipinos, however, the withdrawal of Filipino soldiers from Iraq represents neither a nationalist awakening, nor a principled re-appraisal of our policy toward Iraq in the light of the US Senate's own findings that the reasons for war had been irresponsibly exaggerated. A voluntary withdrawal would certainly have been more honorable.

The only consolation we can derive from all this is that we are made aware once more of the responsibilities that a government assumes when it pushes its people to find work in other countries. Thirty years after embarking on a labor export program, I think we've not fully realized what this demands in terms of adjustments in foreign policy and in the nature of consular work abroad. The first obligation of a government is always to its people, wherever they may be. A president who forgets that will not be around for long.