A new PH future beside the exodus?

EVERY seventh of June, a Southeast Asian archipelago commemorates the “heroism” of compatriots who have been a visible reason for the steady growth of their motherland’s economy. The celebration is National Migrant Workers Day, and the date’s historicity is brought about by the passage of a law to protect the rights and welfare of overseas Filipinos and their families.

That law, currently coded as Republic Act 10022 (Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act, revised twice), spells out regulations for labour migration and lays out the bureaucratic structure —found at home and abroad— that ensures safe and orderly overseas migration. The original law, RA 8042, was a result of the execution of a domestic worker in Singapore, Ms. Flor Contemplacion, in March 1995. That episode created diplomatic tension between the two countries, as well as national shame for a country that then had no enabling law for migrant workers’ protection.

The said law helped the Philippines lay out a program on labour export that (explicitly) facilitates Filipino workers’ overseas placement in destination countries requiring certain skills. Decades hence, to include the hard lessons learned since Contemplacion’s execution, the Philippines has now “excelled” in migration management.

Filipinos are now in over-200 countries and territories, in all sorts of occupations, with their migration status either legal or irregular. Filipinos have contributed to countries’ economic growth, especially countries facing demographic shortfalls and labor shortages. The estimated 10.3 million overseas Filipinos have (unfortunately) become the Philippines’ top export. Their overseas migration is a response to the search for more gainful opportunities, what with the country’s agriculture and manufacturing sectors still struggling and services being the top draw for homeland employment for nearly two decades.

Remittances have been the reason for overseas Filipinos’ symbolic tag as heroes since a formal labor export program (given the passage of a Philippine labor code) began in 1974. Form the 1970s to the mid-2000s, remittances have helped shore up the homeland economy’s fiscal issues, mitigated the impacts of domestic unemployment, and somewhat help buoy the Philippines’ gross national product. That period, spanning just over three decades, saw the Philippines’ macro-economic growth performance as “boom and bust” —like a roller coaster, going up and down. Meanwhile, there is rising overseas migration (including that for overseas permanent residency, depending on the migration pathways countries offer to foreigners) and a concomitant rise of labor, welfare, human rights and criminal / civil cases affecting Filipinos in various hostlands. So with rising migration and remittances is a perceived growing number of problems facing Filipinos abroad, and the corollary family-level social costs.

However, there is a change in the plot: since the 2008 global economic crisis, the Philippine economy is now one of the top economic performers in the world. Sustained gross domestic product growth, with an annual average of some 6 percent, these past ten years is slowly buoying the Philippine economy. Coinciding that is what some demographers perceive to be a demographic transition, where old and young dependents are lesser and the working force is bulging in numbers. That situation gives the Philippines a chance —a 30-year window, says some demographic projections— to drum up as many savings and investments and have these parked at home. Overseas migration and remittances have been contributing their share to this ongoing demographic transition, currently through buoying local consumption.

For decades now, Filipinos abroad are still seen as those women who have found dates online and migrated for economic security; of women as “lowly” domestic workers or as abused spouses even after they