A Look at Asian American Studies - Emery McKee - Ryan Caragher - Emma Rohrer - Gabe Velazquez

Rodriguez says that the Philippine government exploits the labor of a huge number of their citizens by sending them to work overseas. These workers are trained in the Philippines and they are expected to return home after working for short periods of time once their work visas have expired, rather than becoming permanent residents abroad. They are expected to send their wages back to their families in the Philippines through remittances. This becomes the second most important form of income for the Philippine government totalling over $13 billion a year. One way the government enforces this is by exporting just the single worker, rather than the entire family as a whole. Because the economy in the Philippines is so poor, the work abroad is worth it for the people who are sent overseas, even though it breaks up families for extended periods of time. One critic of the governments labor export program, describes it as, “the Philippine state engages in nothing more than ‘legal human trafficking.’”

One potential problemwith the Filipino migrant worker program is the potential for abuse of the many female domestic workers, particularly in the Gulf region. The Philippine government tries to provide protection and basic rights for their workers overseas but their protections haven’t worked because of the unique vulnerabilities faced by domestic workers. Recent tragic deaths of Filipino women working in Kuwait caused the Philippine government to shut down the program temporarily. Naomi Hosoda fromThe Diplomat says that this is unacceptable. “After almost half a century of sending contract workers abroad— especially to the Gulf states — the Philippines should come up with practical measures to prevent tragedies involving domestic workers” The richer more powerful countries continue to exploit more impoverished countries, like the Philippines. It seems almost like a form of slavery, the way the government sells its workers to richer countries. The imbalance of power between the worker and the employer is so clearly shown in the situation of female domestic workers, but it exists, to some extent, in every situation since the migrant worker is unable to negotiate higher wages or better working conditions because they are there temporarily and subjected to deportation if they are uncooperative.

The Tear Between Power