Saturday, September 08, 2007

EDITORIAL - September 8, 2007 Issue


Centennial of Labor Migration
A Poser On RP Progress

By Jeremiah M. Opiniano
In the run-up to the centennial next year of overseas labor migration, a former International Labor Organization (ILO) official wondered why the Philippines still remain underdeveloped.
Manolo Abella, a former top-ranking official of ILO in Geneva, Switzerland, expressed this insight when asked to react on former Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas’s view that labor migration is an "explicit" development strategy of the government.
"Why have we not stimulated more investments in producing goods on which remittance incomes were spent?" Abella asked.
He wonders that in all these years that Filipinos migrate overseas and remit annually billions of dollars, "why have we still failed to build a stronger economy?"
Next year, the country will mark a hundred years when the first Filipinos arrived in California as apple pickers, described in melancholic detail by migrant worker and writer Carlos Bulosan in his book "America In The Heart."
From just a handful of Bulosan’s compatriots, overseas Filipino are now estimated at eight million – temporarily living and working legally and sans official government papers in 191 countries.
Their money has led their families in the Philippines to enjoy benefits while most of them work in dirty, difficult, dangerous, and sometimes dehumanizing jobs. Likewise, with an estimated US$12.6 billion entering the Philippines banking system this year, their money has kept their home country’s economy afloat.
Labor migration has become reputable "especially after the World Bank has recognized that remittances are more important than development aid as a source of development finance, and are more stable than flows of foreign capital", Abella said.
Indeed, the former head of ILO’s migration branch said multilateral group’s recent recognition of remittances for development has made labor migration a more respectable feature of Philippine development policy.
Absentee Progress
However, World Bank economists have cautioned that migration "should not be viewed as a substitute for economic development in the origin country – development ultimately depends on sound domestic policies".
This was so despite president Paul Wolfowitz saying in the Bank’s 2006 Global Economic Report that emigration flows are "critical for development".
Indeed, Wolfowitz has cited that "migration is not always beneficial".
The bank’s statement appears to be in reaction to Sto. Tomas’s statements citing that the Philippines explicitly exports labor as part of the country’s strategy for national development, even noting that Filipinos abroad are sources of the country’s pride.
"[The government] has already admitted that overseas migration has been part of national life, and we have nothing to apologize for," Sto. Tomas said in a forum.
Since remittances account for a tenth of the county’s gross national product (GNP), Sto. Tomas said, the country "has come full circle in recognizing that overseas employment plays a vital role in sustaining our economy".
According to a paper by Mary Lou Alcid of the University of the Philippines’ Social Work Program, the Philippine government has not admitted for a long time that labor export is a policy of national development.
In a paper for an ASEAN regional conference on labor migration by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Alcid wrote that the Philippine government "insists overseas employment is not a policy, and the official position is that people move to where the jobs are."
Abella said it took a government official like Sto. Tomas to backtract on this statement since overseas migration "has always been considered an admission of failure in development."
Black Blocks
According to Abella, Sto. Tomas’s admission matters less "since these [perspective] may change."
What matters most, he said, is "whether policies remain stable" on how the government manages labor migration.
This scholar on international migration disagrees with the assumption that Filipinos are finding employment abroad "because of Philippine policy".
Larger developments elsewhere, such as the oil price boom and export-led industrialization in neighboring countries, are "beyond the control of the Philippine government" and have "created opportunities for our people to earn higher incomes in foreign countries," Abella said.
It was rational for individual Filipinos, he adds, that they were able to exploit these ahead of other nationalities because of their advantage of education and the English language.
Likewise, Abella echoed most analysts’ sentiments that the political noise generated this year hasn’t helped the economy grow to its real level.
"I think our underdevelopment has much to do with poor governance, rather than just misguided policies," he added.
The WB’s report indeed, noted that since remittances are more than twice as the size of international aid flows, these have become an important source of income for developing countries.
Government, Abella said, recognized that "it made economic sense" to support labor migration even if government intervention "was belated response to processes already underway."
Abella wished that Filipino remittances may be "an important source of development finance, and government should find the means to induce more savings rather than consumption."
However, he thinks the country should "worry about her capacity to supply foreign labor market demand for critical skills, and her "low quality" of university education. /MP

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