Philippines, A Nation of Servants?
- Thread starter GekiDan
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The cost of living is very high, though. And the way we live is different.
I remember traveling in the Philippines and meeting people who couldn't understand why their daughter, who was working in the US, did her own housework. She was making what seemed like a fabulous salary, lived in a four-bedroom house, but didn't have a maid. In developing countries, labor is cheap, and for those with money, there is a certain obligation to provide jobs. In developed countries that don't have 'guest worker' type policies, labor is expensive, and people are expected to take care of their homes themselves. I've been given a lot of grief over the years for having someone clean my house once a week.
I remember traveling in the Philippines and meeting people who couldn't understand why their daughter, who was working in the US, did her own housework. She was making what seemed like a fabulous salary, lived in a four-bedroom house, but didn't have a maid. In developing countries, labor is cheap, and for those with money, there is a certain obligation to provide jobs. In developed countries that don't have 'guest worker' type policies, labor is expensive, and people are expected to take care of their homes themselves. I've been given a lot of grief over the years for having someone clean my house once a week.
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Most rich people here in the country have a "house worker" in their place. They clean the house everyday and get paid for their work. And most of them didn't finish their schooling. In what I knew, they fall on to this job to quickly help their family by sacrificing themselves.
I prefer to do my house work anywhere in the world. Where I am in the Middle East there is quite a variety of options available for house work. Number of Filipino women do this, as well as Sri Lankans. I find it a great responsibility and sometimes a worry to employ people and trust them in my home. I find it much easier and hazzle free to do my own cleaning.
What is wrong with being a servant anyway. Aren't most people on earth servants of a kind anyway? Perhaps Filipinos are professionals in that regard, to be respected, and when they are insulted like this, should take it as a compliment to them, and dishonour on the person who insulted them?I was shocked when I heard a late night news about a Hong Kong Chinese article writer. He wrote an article about the Phillipines who wants to wage war on the claim of Spratleys Islands on the Philippine border. The said islands were claiming by different countries including Philippines and China among others. It's true that Philippines will not hold back on claiming what is rightfully ours and defending it from conquerors.
What I don't like about the article is what Chip Tsao, the writer, said:
"But hold on?even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: there are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don?t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter."
It is such an insult that they our our masters.I don't think he have a right to say that. In fact, I don't think there are servant countries who are serving master countries. Am I right?
The whole article is here: http://hk-magazine.com/feature/war-home
For one thing, many of the exported Filipinos are held in virtual slavery. There is a great deal of abuse, especially of maids. In many countries their passports are held by their employers. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, this is true of all foreign workers, even highly paid professionals.
Unless they've changed the system, the passport system in the Philippines makes things even more difficult. They issue different kinds of passports. There are 'domestic worker' passports, tourist passports, and so on. This makes it difficult to run away from a bad situation, as one's passport immediately becomes invalid once you are no longer a 'domestic worker'. The passports are very expensive, too.
There are a lot of scams. I met a woman who paid a lot of money to an agency that promised her a job in the US on a 'domestic worker visa'. She told me they just took her money and nothing ever happened. She was shocked when I told that was because there was no such thing as a 'domestic worker' visa. The sad thing was that she was well-educated, with a university degree and really good English.
Unless they've changed the system, the passport system in the Philippines makes things even more difficult. They issue different kinds of passports. There are 'domestic worker' passports, tourist passports, and so on. This makes it difficult to run away from a bad situation, as one's passport immediately becomes invalid once you are no longer a 'domestic worker'. The passports are very expensive, too.
There are a lot of scams. I met a woman who paid a lot of money to an agency that promised her a job in the US on a 'domestic worker visa'. She told me they just took her money and nothing ever happened. She was shocked when I told that was because there was no such thing as a 'domestic worker' visa. The sad thing was that she was well-educated, with a university degree and really good English.
That's really a big problem to overseas workers. Plus many of them are being abused by their employers. And there are times that these workers returned dead in their country.
I agree with everything you say and wish Filipino people can hold to high standards. For example where I am there is a Filipino Secretary who is very highly qualified with a degree and everything, and she insists to be treated with respect. She insisted to be given a proper expatriate contract like all other expatriates from Western countries, whereas you will find more often than not that some Filipinos who are highly qualified will lower their standards to get a position no matter what, and in the end end up being in that position for ever, getting more and more depressed and unhappy. Once they have that job experience in their CV, they just can't get out of it.
My neighbor is a seamen and he was on board for almost a year then go on vacation for more or less 3 months. I don't know about his income but I can say it's above the normal pay here in our country.
Many say that it is better than to be away from the family getting good and high income rather than stay here and starve to death.
Sounds great! Almost like in the oil and gas industry where people will stay on the platform for 6 weeks (I think) and then 6 weeks off. And get paid well too.
The thing is, that shouldn't be the choice.
I worked with a woman who came to the US for that reason, leaving her two children behind with her mother. She was well-educated and had a good job, but was constantly fighting to bring her children over. People thought it was US immigration that was giving her problems, but it wasn't. The Philippine government wouldn't give her children passports. Because they know that once the children are in the US, the mother will stop sending money back to the family. And remittances from overseas workers are the country's biggest source of hard currencies.
I really didn't know that there is an existing problem like that. I kinda felt sad upon hearing that story. From what I knew, people who want their relatives petitioned to the US have been accepted. That's what I heard from relatives.
This is interesting. I did not know there was a problem like that. I thought quite a number of parents prefer to have their children in the Philippines because of the high standard of education and low cost of living, as well as care by family at home. For some it would be not be worth the cost of bringing their children out as well as housing them expensively to have a job in the foreign country. There would not be anything left of their salaries to send home and depending the salaries they earn, they may not even make ends meet. Also, it would be more difficult to look after their children as living conditions are much tougher in the US than in the Phillipines.
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