While the Philippine government promotes and glorifies overseas labor, it is also aware that most of its citizens find no reason to stay and would try their luck abroad even it means taking the risk of being victimized by illegal recruiters, human traffickers, and human smugglers or hooking up with someone not out of love but out of a better opportunity. At least, this was the impression the immigration officer had left on me after I was interrogated at the dilapidated NAIA Terminal 1 when I left the country on August 10. To be subjected to such an interrogation was pointless considering that I was only going on a business trip and not for regular work abroad. The interrogation was triggered because my itinerary at that time showed only a five-day hotel accommodation in Singapore to think that I was scheduled to be away from the country for seven weeks and would be visiting two countries in a row. So I had some explaining to do. I felt the immigration officers concern that an ordinary Filipino like me can fall prey into trafficking but this also reveals our countrys insecurity, inability, and incapacity to keep our people home. He further asked me how much money I had in my wallet, where I studied, and my ordinal position among my siblings. I dont know why he loosened up his questioning when I said I only had P3000 in cash but my bank account is set up for international access, I graduated from UP, and I am the youngest among the siblings. Maybe he thought that someone who has substantial resources and graduated from UP cannot be easily duped by illegal recruiters into working abroad or maybe he thought that the youngest, unlike the eldest, has no other siblings to send to school, thus, would not be desperate enough to grab even a dubious employment opportunity abroad. Partly, I have become part of that imagined community of Filipinos in the diaspora who maintains both sentimental and material connection to the Philippines. I have just started to walk in their boots and I already feel their struggles and anxieties. How I wish for the time to come when working overseas would just be one of the minor options.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 05:48:40 +0000
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