overseas workers: a world wide phenomenum

 A lot of the kerfuffe about migrants in western countries is about illegal migrants, claiming to be refugees. 

Some are obviously on the dole and others are criminals. But the backstory is that a lot of these people are seeking work: and alas they are not encouraged to bring their families along.

The reason? Lack of workers, due to a low birth rate.

The Philippines has a huge number of OFW: the official number is over 2 million overseas workers, but of course this doesn't include those working without papers, those who legally immigrated to other countries, or those working on ships.

so where do they work?

The same data reveal that about “four in every ten” OFWs work low-status or ‘elementary’ jobs, such as street vendors, construction and factory workers, cleaners, domestic helpers, and agriculture laborers. A majority of OFWs work in Asia, specifically Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Singapore, and Qatar.

and although usually discussions of migrants are about young men, half of Philippine OFW are women.,Many of them are parents who left their children behind at the care of others in order to provide for the basic needs of their children.

Sigh.

the answer to this of course is to get local jobs that pay well, but even then it often means migrating to another area in the Philippines (many of our workers are from Joy's village in the Visayas who we recruited. Many local workers prefer to go to Manila or overseas to work where pay is better, so ironically, the long term results of land reform is that their kids are now educated and don't want to work for a pittance on their family's farm. So gradually their older parents are selling the land to returning OFW/Balibayan who will hire tenant farmers to work, or more recently, will sell the land for second vacation homes to the affluent from Naila, or more recently, to the company that is putting up solar panels to supply electricity to Manila.

Sigh.

farmersneed money for modern machinery, fertilizer etc. and the government is pushing green organic growing of food. Healthier food, but more expensive.

But the shortage of farm workers is not a Philippine problem. As I noted: Many of our workers and tenant faremrs are from the Visayas, But in other countries, they import people from poorer countries>

From a Japanese pape :

of the nation’s 67.81 million workers, more than 2.3 million—or roughly one in every 29—are foreign nationals. Just over a decade ago, the ratio was one in 112. Urban centers such as Tokyo lead the way in foreign workers, with one in 14 workers being a foreigner, but rural regions are witnessing the fastest growth. Hokkaido, Okinawa and Kagoshima prefectures have seen foreign labor increase seven- to eightfold over the past decade.

the birth dirth means fewer young people to do low paying jobs and a snobbery often means they don't want to do "dirty jobs" (the blue haired feminist SJW who see themselves as activists but lament they can only find work at Starbucks with their advanced degree in feminist studies come to mind. Why don't they take a course in nursing or caregiving? That's a major way for Filipino women to get a job overseas to support her family). Or join the armed services.

So until the educational system encourages the work ethic, and until the birth dirth is corrected, if Trumpieboy wants to rid the USA of migrant workers, he is in trouble. 

Of course, the answer is to have them come legally, which means recruiting and screening them. 

In the past, Many Mexican took temproary work visas, and of course the large illegal Mexican migrant population in the US was winked at: Most assimilated in their own neighborhoods: Most Catholic churches had Spanish masses for them, and many small Pentecostal churches got busy recruiting them as members. Many kept ties to their families and sent money home to them, just like the Philippine OFW.

But Biden's policy not to regulate this, along with the way the drug gangs morphed into the people smugglers, along with a lot of NGOs that saw the needy as someone to help but ignored that part about criminal gangs and drugs, broke the social contract of America that said if you come and work hard, you can become an American.

Sigh.