Ilongo, Luigi John ; Jomaya, Neil John BS IT 1A April 24, 2019

GLOBAL MIGRATION

During these days, especially in the Philippine situation, a lot of Filipino workers and
graduates tend to go abroad in order to help alleviate the dire situation that their families
experience but not all. Some just go abroad in order to experience a different scenery, food,
culture, and whatever kind of things they want to experience. This kind of situation is not only
prevalent in the Philippines but also other countries like India and China in which their workers
also tend to go outside their country to look for better opportunities in life.

Migration started way long before even the rise of human civilization. Our ancestors have
already been going from places to places just for food and other needs. It is only today that
migration did really became a hot topic due to the amount of information that everyone receives.
Another reason is that in the past, not many countries depend on other countries (even if either
side is wealthy or not; wealth not purely based on money but on tangible resources) because they
can just trade things in a leeway style. People just produce crops, materials or products while
other people buy it for money. People had their own way on how to make money and alleviate
their own selves without that much outside interference.

However, today, the situation has changed. Wealthy countries, especially first world
countries, tend to acquire skilled workers and professionals directly or indirectly (referred to as
brain drain) from other poor countries by handling out better benefits they provide rather than an
individual’s national country. Because of this, a lot of third world and developing countries has a
slow development holistically since a lot of their workforce has been abducted by the first world
countries.

Unlike the old days in which people would just work for their own selves and earn an ample
amount of money, today, people tend to work for companies, especially multi-national companies
that offers those kind of glorious benefits where some of these “companies” would require workers
to sacrifice their own life force whether they like it or not. At other times, people are blinded by
their own greed and ignorance in which they tend to ignore risks and other pre-requisites that lead
to very awkward situations. These can either be blamed through the employer or to the employed.
For example, a Filipino professional wanted to work to Japan, and since they wanted such work
so bad, they tend to sometimes forget other things like learning Japanese language, culture and

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other things. They tend to forget to do their homework on learning it and when they do arrive on
that situation, they become embarrassed or irritated. At one point, they may blame their employer
for not telling them that his/her co-workers do not know how to speak English, or other languages
that may intertwine with him/her. At other times, the employed worker also tend to forget the risks
of working the job either because they ignore it or because such risk only presented itself as the
worker started to do their job.

The above paragraph talks about the problem in migrating to other countries which is
integration. It is so difficult to make fruition because; (1) the outside individual must be able to
adapt directly to its new environment; (2) the primary individual(s) (i.e. People who are in the
original side) must also be patient with their new subordinate; and (3) each one of them should
put aside their own differences especially on rare occasions in which the outside individual has a
conflicting characteristic to the primary individuals (i.e. a Muslim worker working in USA).

One concrete example of an integration problem is when a Filipino worker works in a

certain company and then acquired an information that his/her co-worker were mostly Indian,
Arab, Filipino, and British people. Indians and Arabs tend to have this kind of smell that sticks to
them, and specially the Arabs, tend to have a very low temper. While on the other hand, British
people tend to be so cocky and prideful of their own status to other people and sometimes, mocks
those of the brown/black race. This would leave the Filipino workers into a corner and have a very
hard time cooperating with these people because of their extremely dangerous personalities and
attitudes.

Another problem when migrating into other countries is the overall cost of going to that
target country, and the chance of recovering from the cost. It is very risky, especially for those
common type of workers (although they have a professional skills/degree) to migrate because of
the high-cost, high-risk style. It costs thousands of pesos just to board an airplane, which excludes
other fees like renting apartments, riding public transports, food consumption, etc. The risky part
plays when an individual failed to find a proper job and all the while, exhausted their own money.
Other times, some devious individuals would take advantage of such situations, although chances
rarely happens.

This only happens for those common type of workers, meanwhile, those who were referred
to by special individuals of a certain company, or those who were endorsed by their schools as
they graduate with outstanding performance or those with extremely capable skills disregarding
his/her own social status would have an easy time of getting a job and at the same time, get even

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more glorious benefits. This happens because as far as companies are concerned, they are rather
opportunity-oriented and the future-proof of their company. Future-proof, it entails that their
company will still be able to prosper in the near future. So that is why as soon as they see a
potential variable (can be workers, can also refer to sudden positive opportunities that may give
them a lead), they will immediately indulge themselves to it in order to bring more profit to the
company.

Amidst all of these negativities in migration, there are also, neutral and positive things
when migrating into other countries. As what have been experienced by some OFW’s, they say
that going to other countries would make one say that their native country is just a small part of
the world.

One positive aspect is that an individual from outside may get to experience the taste of
the native food of the country they migrated into. For example, migrating to Japan will expose
great opportunities for a Filipino to taste the infamous sushi from the Japanese. Or even ramen
and some other native products. However, not all countries just expose only their own native
cuisines. Some other countries become a hub of trading and therefore, a lot of foreign goods
come across it which can be benefited by the populace.

For example, going to the Middle East like in the UAE or United Arab Emirates especially
in Dubai, one can see a variety of foods stocked in their supermarkets. Although the price also
varies, like some foreign goods being more expensive than being bought at its native country,
still, a lot of people want to taste these kinds of foods, and cook it just like how one other country
cook it. Like a chicken. In Filipino culture, it can be cooked as a finished product called “Adobong
Manok”, in which soy sauce has been mixed to the chicken, including it being sautéed.

It has been stated above that integrating with other people and country is hard. But at
lucky times, Filipinos and other dejected individuals may encounter other native people which has
a very good personality and attitude. Instead of being discriminated in the scene, they were rather
welcomed with open arms, and then casually converse with each other as if they were longtime
friends that just saw each other again until now.

In the end, the effects of migration vary with the experiences of people during their
migration. Some have bad experiences, some have good ones.

Its effect on the dependent country like the Philippines is still on the neutral side. The
Philippine’s GDP may increase due to the increase of remittances flowing throughout abroad,

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meanwhile, the families of those who migrated may have other say on this. Yes, some families
may be happy, but at most times, other families tend to break down slowly as the absence of one
family member has drastically changed the situation inside the family. OFW’s generally agree that
going outside requires enough courage and sacrifice.

On our side, the impact of migration either on the personal perspective, family perspective
or community perspective differs on how an individual experience it. It should not be concluded
that migration helps both side of the coin (the dependent and receiving country), nor degrades at
least one side. Otherwise, the situation like inflation, poverty and other positive/negative effects
may have been increased, resulting to either rapid development or overall downfall of a country
and its economy.