Pinoys for export

JUST BE By Bernadette Sembrano
The Philippine Star 06/25/2006
 

Home-grown, best-quality and ready for export to over 190 countries all over the world! I’m not talking about our bananas from Davao, nor our sweet mangoes from Guimaras, but our people, Filipinos, who may very well be considered as export commodities nowadays. This started in the ’70s, during the Marcos administration, and has now reached new heights – over eight million Filipinos all over the world, a whopping 10 percent of our 80 million population.

Thanks to them, our economy is afloat: close to $12 billion in remittance in 2005. They are called heroes by the government, but this may not be so to some children who desire nothing more than being with their parents leading to delinquency. Children of OFWs are often left with their grandparents and other relatives, growing up with an ire for their parents who are abroad.

Sally Jimenez struggles to this day to earn the affection of her three children when she left for New York in 1997 to become a CPA, a certified public atsay (maid) – a name she coined herself. Sally overstayed but with the help of her employer, she adjusted her status under an immigration law called the LIFE Act, which allowed undocumented aliens to change their status without leaving the country. 

For years she could not come home to visit her family while her green card was being processed. Both Sally and her husband Danny agreed that it would be good for the children’s future if Sally stuck it out in New York.

In 2002, Danny was diagnosed with kidney cancer but he pleaded Sally not to come home. All Sally could do was call overseas, and listen to Danny as he breathed his last. "I was so helpless that I felt like I was losing my mind," recalled Sally, "He begged me not to come home whatever happened to him.  He said the future of our children should come first." 

Sally finally got her green card in 2005 and came home right away to visit her children and her husband’s grave.

"The saddest part of my visit was when I had to leave my two children again."  Sally shared.  "I kept on crying, while my children tried not to cry in front of me.  But somebody told me they also cried when I was gone." 

"Hopefully, by next year, they will be here with me," she said.  "at di na kami magkakahiwa-hiwalay ulit." 

Last year, almost a million Filipinos left the country to work abroad. Seventy six percent of them are women, many of them are mothers like Sally who find employment as domestic helpers, caregivers and entertainers. Close to a million families again will be left behind, hungry for love, care and attention.

While the government continues to see the Filipino as the most precious export commodity there is, it is robbing the nation of its parents, now our mothers, to the detriment of our society.