The sadness is palpable in the hugs and the tears. Not a few of the seemingly hardy men bound for the construction sites or the shipyards abroad are just as teary eyed as the women who will be back in the domestic confines of their foreign employment. They embrace with pained expression on their faces, lamenting perhaps their sad fate of why their families should be torn apart for periods seemingly eternally long for the sake of bettering their lives.
My sense of the sadness pervading these farewell scenes are much rooted to my own experiences as a child. I remember when my parents, both teachers, would be sent by their schools for out-of-town conferences or seminars, and I would be crying like I would not be seeing them again; and that was just for about a few days’ or a week’s absence. And when I studied at university, every trip back to Manila from the province – since I only went home every semester’s end – was like going through an emotional upheaval as I, already in my teens, would go into a bawling episode as I held my parents tightly, not wanting to leave the comforts of home and loving company.
The final destinies of families made unwhole because one, or both, of the spouses leave for work abroad are no longer rare information. Almost every one of us knows of a family, if not our very own, with members who are migrant workers, along with the success and mostly the sob stories that come with their plight.
The social costs of migrant employment are quite familiar – spouses made vulnerable by the loneliness in a foreign land and finding solace in the arms of someone else other than their legitimate partners, children who grow up wanting of proper parental guidance and eventually leading lives that our society frowns upon, parents and children who become strangers under one roof and whose sole connection with each other is the regular remittances that are made to take the place of actual physical and emotional company.
Of course, there are the stories that tragedies are made of – the teacher who opts for the life of a household help but who ends up a victim of white slavery, the professional whose contract is substituted for work that pays pittance and denies him all possibilities of getting out of the rut, the worker who finds himself in detention under laws he could not comprehend, and the construction worker who gets blown off in a helicopter crash while working in a war-torn country.
The difficulty in looking at the challenges facing the lives of migrant workers lies in the fact that many of our countrymen who go the way of migrant employment do so as a choice that they cannot live without. There is that thinking that no other option is left in the country, that the only source of salvation is to depart for some faraway land where the proverbial pastures are greener and there is milk and honey sufficiently stored in the barn.
Count the social costs against all these, and the true nature of the issue surfaces – the matter of how far can one really be patient in his or her economic state of life in relation to one’s level of satisfaction and the general appreciation of how lives ought to be lived. Here’s some reality check for the potential migrant worker:
Indeed, has the economic state of your life and that of your family’s become so despicably miserable that you must, by all means, work abroad? Have your loved ones, especially your children, actually complained and told you that they would prefer you leaving the abode just so that there would be better food, clothes and shelter for them?
Are your ambitions to make a better life for your family immensely dictated by a heap of hearsay about people actually succeeding as migrant workers? Are these stories true in the first place? Have you actually seen the on-going dynamics in their families? Have you, even for once, considered that their problems could be your own once you slip into their shoes?
Are there really no more options for you to work here, or are your desire for instant financial windfall clouding your vision on other possibilities at the domestic front that are just as financial rewarding if we allow it to prosper over time?
Is your heart really that stiff and cold to waste years away from your family, from your spouse and children, to amass material wealth that you could never enjoy in the emotional estrangement that pervades the household?
I know of what I speak of as my family never joined the migrant bandwagon despite all the prospects being laid open. In my growing up years, we went through the economic challenges of life, but never has it occurred to my parents to leave us behind even as our aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. were flying out of the country in the hope to financially establish themselves in their respective lands of promises.
So how did it turn out? Let’s just say that, then as now, it made for my staunch belief that a family that remains physically, emotionally, and spiritually together is unquestionably ideal and irreplaceable.
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