Quantifying Migration Under Globalization

In a country like the Philippines, beset as it is with stubborn economic problems exacerbated by sticky and shaky political institutions, the human component of globalization figures very prominently and is quite known and accepted generally. While a vocal minority emanating from academia and the media may not cease to balk at what globalization (as personified negatively by the WTO) has wrought to many distressed local economic sectors, this least-noticed offshoot of globalization races on unabated.

Inward foreign currency remittances coming from human labor exports (OFWs, for short in the Philippines), including from many long-time Filipino ex-pats scattered throughout the globe, account for at least 12% of the country’s GDP. Unchecked in its continuing upward trend dating back many years, the annual figure now stands at US$13.6 billion for 2006, with 60-65% originating from the US alone. More are unaccounted because they do not go through established financial channels.

But all this time, we have not really known what the global total was for this unexpected phenomenon brought about essentially by globalization. From a WorldBank source now we know that the current annual total stands at US$276 billion (for 2006).

To lend perspective to this huge global total, this amount is a lot larger than the annual trade imbalance the US has with one of its major trading partners, China, which accounts for 26% of the US total trade imbalances with the world.

Not surprisingly, the report further reveals that India tops the list with about US$27 billion, which is double the figure for the Philippines. Understandably, in a country with over one billion people in population, its overseas citizens’ sheer numbers translate to more inward dollars or foreign exchange.

Here in the US, we have known that Mexicans here, both legal and illegal, send a total annual amount more than its oil revenues, and now we know that that same amount is also more than its direct foreign investments. “Remittances "are larger than direct foreign investment in Mexico, tea exports in Sri Lanka, tourism revenue in Morocco, and revenue from the Suez Canal in Egypt," World Bank economist Dilip Ratha said in a recent report. “

But this traceable phenomenon is not unique only to some countries because it is happening in most countries in the globe. From Albania and Latvia, to Poland, to unknown Moldova and from populous countries like Mexico.

While the astronomical money figures will singularly astound the world, one cannot help think that they represent the value of adult human labor done in foreign countries. One cannot help consider the many aggravating personal circumstances being inflicted on those who perform the labor. Where young productive mothers and fathers are wrenched away from their families for long periods of time on end and transported to foreign countries to earn their living. Families chopped to pieces and missing their heads, physically absent to care for and to nurture their vulnerable families.

Thus, while the impressive cornucopia of liquid cash coming from abroad invigorates local communities with former residents working abroad, there are serious trade-offs involved. True, many local communities across the globe have seen many economic transformations, from new spanking houses to new small businesses sprouting, and maybe even better citizens out of former residents who return to their homelands. But one doubts whether one could assess the telling blows on the families of those affected until maybe a generation later.

And worse, because this shift in population self-perpetuates until the home country is able to correct the very imbalances that brought about the mass exodus, such as dismal lack of domestic jobs and necessary economic and social infrastructures needed to bring about or sustain an economy of growth.

Old Thoughts, New Medium

Gripped in odd moments of human helplessness, it is not unusual for man to awkwardly start a conversation with his God. Sometimes in self-effacing candor he may look at his own tattered self as still like unto the image of his God though recklessly warped it may have been defaced. Indeed, all creatures are likened unto God from whence all emanated. And yet, God is not like us, no more than a sketch of any man is like that man. We stumble badly when we use our finite minds and language to describe the grandeur and perfection of that divinity to which we crave for ultimate unity.

We discern that the least perfection we find in our species speaks volumes of the ultimate perfection of that uncontainable model that interrupted his timelessness to transport us to finite time and space. Still, we admit that however generous and helpingful our pious platitudes may seem, they are simply dim, inadequate, puny, obscure and faint shadows of revelation of the awesome substance of that infinity. He who has no name is one who cannot be contained either in words of language or deep mystical musings.

Yes, we acknowledge God is good, and we like to think that somehow in this all too upside down world we now find ourselves in, that good would somehow manifest itself and bring some needed relief to a much-burdened humanity. We pine for the abundant generosities bestowed in times past. Godly love that showered us when least expected. His benign mercies easing the many vicissitudes that seemed formidable. So now we are desperate for a renewed round of tangible manifestations of his goodness.

And that is when we miss the mark completely. For that infinite goodness that we hanker for is not one prone to bring and give, but rather to demand and take. His goodness is expressed not so much as what it brings to us, but rather that it aims to take our hearts away from us. This captivating lover entices to wrench our hearts away from us. It aims to light up our timid hearts so that like smoldering torches it can scale the heights of its own goodness. Thus inflamed, no journey will be long enough, no peril too dangerous, and no obstacle too formidable. Giving birth to the needed courage, daring, wisdom, and strength to overhaul our adversities.

Look inward. The solutions are right there, not in projective victimhood. Nor in utter surrender to perceived inevitabilities of overwhelming human or institutional failings. Escapist exercises in endless rhetorical debates and mental gymnastics will not be sufficient, either.

Don’t look around, rather look inward. We grant that our very nature willingly inclines toward talking and discoursing with one another, but remember that seldom do we return to our own solitude without grave prejudice to our own conscience.

The more I converse with man, the less I find myself a man when I return. No truer words said.

Religiosity From The Past (Part Two)

Following up on the initial entry which was about my maternal grandmother, continuing to rummage through the remaining stowed items in the new house has unraveled yet another interesting remnant from the past. This time an old devotional/prayer book owned by my late mother, again written in the language of her milieu, Spanish, and made in Germany. I had asked the wife how this new find got into our possession, but immediately recalled that my mother had lived with us here in the US for about 10 years prior to spending her remaining years in the old homeland. Then it dawned on me that among the few things that she brought from the old country were the prayer books, rosary, and novenas that were her constant and ever dependable companions.

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Tracy Skyscape

The intense summer heat notwithstanding, Tracy can be a riveting visual delight. The chocolate-colored hills from the distance. . .
(Click images to enlarge)




. . .and the mute explosion of colors in its twilight sky.

When Is Many Too Many?

Unarguably The Bay Area anchored by the city of San Francisco in the US is home to many residents of Filipino descent, counting several cities with dominating percentages of such minorities, namely, Daly City, Union City, Hercules, Vallejo, Milpitas, etc.

There is little surprise then that this adequately-educated group has been targeted by certain local print media practitioners (of Filipino descent, of course) as their primary clients. Thus, many weekly newspapers blanket this large area with their colorful publications. Last I counted at least 6 or 7 of these publications are readily available within the greater San Francisco area.

It might be interesting to note here how these publications are circulated in their targeted markets. First, most important cities here in the US have what is popularly referred to as “one-newspaper town” situation, meaning essentially that each locale is serviced by only one major newspaper (applying to dailies) and economics has been attributed as mostly responsible for this. A known example is San Francisco which used to have two major dailies, the San Francisco Chronicle and The SF Examiner. While the latter still exists, it is now essentially a “free” newspaper on a reduced-size format. Now, the Filipino newspapers (typically published weekly) are of this second kind. Essentially given out free, though a couple still maintaining a semblance of being for sale by noting the price of each copy prominently on the front page. Nothing unusual since it is common practice here for free newspapers to still carry a price tag.

Guess where they are available? Typically in properly marked newsstands or shelves in certain ethnic grocery stores, or in well-patronized FilAm businesses such as bakeries or restaurants.

Not included in the picture are the Philippine News, Manila Bulletin USA, and Ang Panahon. The Philippine News is the grand-daddy of them all having been established way back in 1961. Mr. Alex Exclamado used to the publisher when we first got here in Northern California. Only the three newspapers in the picture where available during our last sortie to San Francisco, and aside from those mentioned above, there may be a couple more whose names escape my memory.

If we can accept the premise that economics dictated the rationale of a one-newspaper town, why do we have a sizeable number of newspapers serving an even smaller number of readers, even granting that the rule applied to dailies and we are querying weeklies here? And remember further that these are given out free, gratis, not even a thank you and you are welcome.

We have to assume that these are profitable ventures and that their revenue streams must not be in subscription or newspaper sales, or else why do they continue to be published. I am confident their publishers have either their altruistic streaks or for the common good idealism, but still they wouldn’t be able to sustain losses indefinitely.

Advertisements. That’s what these publications have plenty of, page after page of them ranging from coming live shows of Filipino artists to immigration services coming from the many immigration lawyers around. Most news items are anyway “canned” coming from the old homeland, and even the opinion columns, many are extracted from the national dailies in Metro Manila. One (or two) even carries the syndicated column of Ms. Michelle Malkin, the most visible and widely-read political editorialist/blogger of Filipino descent here in the US.

What else? I have noticed that these publications carry what used to be sectioned out in the old broadsheets as the society page, where social “happenings” within the local communities are either pictorially depicted or written about; but clearly in this instance a more extended and picture-dominated version . And mined from the sometimes loud verbal skirmishes within the group which somehow inadvertently wound their way to the public, I read sometime ago that this is possibly another revenue stream source. Subjects pay some “publication” fees to have their children’s graduation, marriage, trip to the old homeland, a well-attended sumptuous despedida or bienvenida, etc., featured or written about. Can its veracity be confirmed?

Anyway, what appears unchallenged is that these publications must of themselves be profitable because if not, the intractable laws of economics will invariably set in to write finis to them.

Thus, again the market holds sway, the number of newspapers being determined primarily by what the market can bear.