The Family

I came across this video and decided to embed onto my blog because it shows the family relations when a loved one is working overseas. There were quite a bunch of videos on YouTube, but many were hard to understand because of the language barrier. This video is in Tagalog, but has the English translation. The telephone and Internet is one way of families communicating. Usually my mom would buy a pre-paid phone card and call our relatives about once or twice a month, sometimes more when there is a birthday in the family.

Families really do benefit when a loved one is working overseas. The sacrifice of being away can be hard on both parties. Birthdays missed, holidays not celebrated together, the lack of ability to be there physically. The money earned helps the family. They are able to have food at the table, afford the goods of life and in the case of the family in the video, save up for higher education.

Fortunately for this family, there is a happy ending. The father is able to return back home because he felt that he has saved enough for the family to be able to survive and even has money to send his son to college. His wife talks about working back home in the Philippines because the conditions are better for them too. I would imagine the five years away was a not easy just because he had family that worried for his health and safety and when I was watching the video for the first time, I wasn’t sure how it would end. There where shakey grounds, like when the son had to go to the hospital but the family ensured that everything will be okay.

In a culture where family is definitely something valued, the homecoming can be something very emotional and good. For the last post of the semester, I thought that I’d end in a happier note because even though there are many injustices and human rights violations happening to overseas workers, there are happy endings. On that note, don’t work in Kuwait.

What started it all?

I tried looking up exactly when and how OFW’s started, but I could not find it in one answer. I began to think about everything I learned from high school and in college because it seems that everything is interconnected. It can all go back to when Ferdinand Marcos was the president during the Martial Law. In this period, the Philippines was in lots of debt because Marcos had the country build many buildings throughout the city, trying to make a third world country look first world. The country borrowed money from international banks bringing them in a very huge debt. Even today, the country is still in that debt.

Just before the Martial Law in 1972, there was the Immigration Act of 1965, many Filipinos were able to leave the Philippines and follow their families to America. This created an opportunity for Filipinos to travel and work abroad. I can see the national connection, but I haven’t found a clear international connection. Many of those who work abroad sends a majority of their earnings back home to their families in the Philippines, not leaving much for them to use as pocket/survival money. With the Immigration Act and the Filipinos able to travel around the world, working and making money is easier than ever.

The debt that accumulated because of Marcos left the country with a very low economy, making jobs hard to find and very huge gap between the elite and lower class. From a previous blog, it said that OFWs provide about $15 million of the income of the country. That’s a lot of money and workers. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo encourages workers to go overseas. I guess I’m being politically bias, but I think she’s just trying to avoid the internal problems of the country.