The gentrification of the OFW

MANILA, Philippines -- The papers report a new trend in Filipino out-migration. Apparently, the report said, middle-level managers and professionals now outnumber domestic helpers and “cultural performers.”

Whether the middle-class exodus is in the form of fixed-contract labor (hence the original term “OCW,” or overseas contract worker) or that of outright immigration and permanent relocation, we must look instead at its true costs and benefits.

What can we expect from this new development? On the positive side, maybe the Filipino passport will command more respect when we travel abroad. I do not in any way cast any blame whatsoever on our countrymen who have taken low-skilled jobs abroad in order to sustain their families back home. They deserve our support and admiration, and I have spoken many times, in this space and elsewhere, about the redemptive power of their sacrifice.

Rather I acknowledge as a fact the deplorable practice of foreign countries that treat Filipinos shabbily. How many times have you seen Filipinas asked to form another line at airport immigration counters, on the automatic assumption that they are suspect as illegal migrants? How many times have you been questioned and scrutinized at foreign borders, while all your other friends are waved through? Yet read the text of your passport: “The Government of the Republic of the Philippines requests all concerned to permit the bearer, a citizen of the Philippines … to pass safely and freely and … to give him/her all lawful aid and protection.”

One real achievement of affirmative-action programs in the United States -- those that put a “thumb on the scale” to boost opportunities mainly for racially disadvantaged groups -- is that, by enabling more and more African-Americans, Latinos and Asians to break social barriers, they also broke stereotypes. That a dark-skinned person is not automatically assumed to be the janitor; he just might be the professor. That Asians can operate not just laundries and grocery stores, but also run banks and corporations, and be doctors, nurses and lawyers.

That automatic nexus between race and line of work, say, Indians and 7-Eleven convenience stores, Chinese and dry-cleaning, Koreans and fruit stalls -- what broke it best? For our purposes, what would it take to smash the stereotype of the Filipino as a maid? A thousand pious sermons that we are all equal in the eyes of God? Or a face-to-face encounter with a bright Filipino doctor on whom your life depends? Try telling your surgeon to form another queue because he/she is Filipino.

The need to break racial stereotypes should teach us other lessons as well. First, we must not practice racial stereotyping ourselves. We must end the Filipino -- indeed, Southeast Asian -- penchant to single out Chinese merchants for extortion and the native bureaucracy’s willingness to look the other way. It is particularly embarrassing for the Philippines, almost all of whose national heroes are Chinese-Filipinos.

Second, the educated and sophisticated Filipino elite, which loves to distance itself from the hoi polloi, must realize that, once abroad, they are all in the same dilapidated boat. All of them will in various ways feel the brunt of foreigners’ bigotry. Thus, domestically, Filipinos love to classify themselves according to wealth and class, and delight in pecking orders: who went to the classiest schools, wear the flashiest clothes, drive the fancy cars and other preoccupations of the Filipino petty bourgeoisie. Yet, once they stand at immigration counters abroad, they suddenly recognize what they all have in common: their Philippine passports.

The downside of the middle-class shift of the Filipino Diaspora is more familiar, but it is also nothing new. We have feared the brain drain for as long as I can remember, and yet we have not suffered -- and indeed have benefited -- from the continuing supply of brains that we educate and then export.

What we should aim at, rather, is what the Indian techies have done. They went to America, thrived in Silicon Valley and returned to invest in Bangalore with fresh capital and know-how. The South Korean and Taiwanese migrant communities have likewise kept alive their bonds to the homeland. The Filipino communities abroad must not limit those bonds to regular remittances to families back home. They must ensure that, 10 or 15 years down the road, a new generation of “hyphenated” Filipinos will have knowledge and capital to re-invest.

Finally, have you ever wondered exactly when Filipinos learned to line up at bus stops and jeepney stops? When I returned to Manila after several years of graduate studies abroad, I noticed this absolutely incredible phenomenon of discipline and forbearance. I can only surmise that the practice began from returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who must have told their compatriots that people in foreign lands had a civilized way to ride buses. The cultural transfer of “best practices” from abroad should accelerate with the middle-class shift of the Pinoy diaspora. They after all are better equipped to make the most of e-mail and the Internet, with equally voluble networks of friends back home.

The gentrification of the OFW is a sad commentary on Philippine life. The poor leave for lack of money, the wealthy leave for lack of hope. But we are not the first, nor are we alone, in this tragedy. Other nations -- Ireland, Italy, Poland, even Finland -- have gone through similar phases, and now thrive and, indeed, play host to OFWs. As the old prayer goes, we ask for the courage to change the things that we can change, the patience to accept the things we cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. - Raul Pangalangan, Columnist, Inquirer, June 13, 2007