Sacrifice

We worry about healthcare, childcare, a society where even if two parents are in the same household (40% of US live births are out of wedlock, and our divorce rate sits at approximately 50%), latch-key child are anything but rare. If you watch those “family” shows, in black and white, from the 1950s and even into the 1960s, daddy worked and mommy stayed home to look after the household and the children. WWII Rosie the Riveter had long-since been displaced by returning GIs; she was back in the home.

Today, where there are two adults in the household, excepting the rarified air of the top ten percent on the economic scale, it takes them both working to keep up with rising and almost unaffordable housing, food, healthcare and, later, college and trade school. We live in a country where there is still a stigma, particularly in old traditional states, associated with any form of government subsistence, even earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare. But we have never needed those support systems more.

For the most part, particularly with more evenly-divided gender access to higher education, at least there are sufficient jobs in the developed world to provide meaningful employment for both adults. There are many countries, where work is so scarce or badly-compensated that one partner literally moves overseas to find work at a higher level, sending the money back to support the remaining partner, saddled with family responsibility, in the home country. 

That’s the story that often drove undocumented immigration across our southern border, well before the violence in Mexico and parts of Central America drove people north to seek asylum, an American tradition that literally was how this nation began. In a world of modern-day sex worker and slave trafficking, there is a category of exploited overseas workers, one notch above being victims of human trafficking: temporary overseas workers. Instead of focusing on Latin America, today, I’d like to shift that focus to two nations where financial necessity has sent their citizens overseas in support of their families.

Domestics and construction workers are at the bottom of that economic ladder. Maritime crews stand up next. Musicians, yes musicians, rise to the next level. Mass exports of nurses and accountants make up the highest mass tranche. Every Sunday, in Hong Kong Central, hordes of Philippine domestic workers (all women) gather (pictured above) – often after a Catholic mass – to exchange stories and build camaraderie from the “old country.” They all dream of making enough money to retire in their native land.

Every Christmas, overseas Filipinos revel in sending large boxes of gifts (treats, food, little things) “back home” – the famous Balikbayan boxes – that clog postal and shipping company warehouses in a very lucrative way. They long for home, taking an occasional trip back to see what they are missing. But working overseas is their only way of generating enough money for those back home (called remittances). 11% of the entire population works abroad.

Overseas labor is one of the Philippine largest exports. “In 2018, remittance had increased to $31 billion, which was nearly 10% of the GDP of the Philippines. Remittances by unofficial, including illegal, channels are estimated by the Asian Bankers Association to be 30 to 40% higher than the official BSP figure. In 2011, remittances were US$20.117 billion.” Wikipedia 

If you have spent time in a large American hospital, you may have been the beneficiary of one of the Philippines’ greatest exports: some of the finest, well-educated nurses in the world. Musicians? They are on cruise ships in local bars and trying to become a bit more commercial and famous. Because English is spoken by 97% of Filipinos, they are highly exportable. Where they exist in numbers abroad, they bring their restaurants, their culture and the musical joy. Many are separated for decades from wives, husbands, parents and children… and Filipinos are totally family centric. Most long to return to live in their native land… someday.

On the eastern side of the Indonesian archipelago, near Bali, lies the island of Lombok. One impoverished village on the eastern side of that island, Wanasaba, is virtually devoid of young mothers, women who are the perfect age to look after children. Their child-rearing skills are highly prized in the Muslim world (Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world), and they can make a relatively sizeable paycheck, by local standards:

“Most of the men here work as farmers or labourers, earning a fraction of what the women can make as domestic workers or nannies overseas… The village is made up of tightly packed houses close to the road, separated by alleyways just wide enough for motorbikes to pass and then behind them are seemingly endless rice paddies.

“When mothers leave, extended families and husbands step in to take on the childcare - and everyone here watches out for each other's children…But it's painful for any child to say goodbye to a parent…

“Women started travelling abroad to work from this part of Indonesia in the 1980s… Without legal protection they are vulnerable to abuse. There are stories of people coming home in coffins. Others have been so badly beaten by employers that they have sustained serious injuries. Some have been sent home unpaid.

“And sometimes mothers come home with more children, born from forced or consensual sexual relationships… These are often referred to as the anak oleh-oleh - the souvenir children… Being mixed-race, they stand out in the villages.

“Eighteen-year-old Fatimah says sometimes she likes the attention… ‘People often look at me in surprise. I do look different. Some say, 'Oh you're so beautiful, because you have Arab blood.' That makes me happy,’ she says with a nervous laugh… But migrants' rights groups say souvenir children are often stigmatised and teased at school.

“Fatimah never met her Saudi Arabian father but he did send her mother money, enabling her to remain at home with her children. Then, not long ago, he died. After that, life became tough, so Fatimah's mother has just left again for another job in Saudi Arabia.

“‘What made my mother decide to leave was that my little brother was always saying, 'When are we going to be able to afford a motorbike?' And when he saw people using a new mobile phone he would say, 'When can we have one like that?'’ Fatimah says… She continues, tearfully: ‘If my mum hadn't left for Saudi Arabia we wouldn't have enough money to live.’” BBC.com, May 13th. Indonesians refer to these communities as the "motherless villages."

America used to have a heart. Our values championed repressed and oppressed people everywhere. The world is overcrowded. Resources are dwindling. Polarization is expanding, and climate change is rendering significant regions agriculturally unproductive. Most of the above stories don’t really impact us… I did that intentionally. But the folks trying to enter our nation at our southern border are desperate and scared. I’m sure they heard stories about an America that is slowly disappearing, about kind and caring Americans with open hearts.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and by executive order, empathy has left the building.