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Monday, October 10, 2005
Editorial: Sacrificial cash cows
LISA works hard for her money. But unlike the lean pickings she made as a dancer in a Davao strip joint, she gets Y300,000 or P150,000 a month for entertaining salary men at an omise (nightclub) in Ibaraki, Japan.
Deducting the cost of living and tools for her trade, there is still P50,000 for her to send home.
For unforeseen expenses, like a relative’s emergency hospitalization, Lisa will risk going out as a dohan (companion) for a customer’s wild night out. Servicing a client at a hotel can fetch as much as Y30,000 an hour.
Lisa knows what she might be getting into: perhaps punched or burnt by a sadist, forced to service other drinking buddies or even strangers so the customer can recover what he paid the omise mamasan (manager), ending in the morgue.
“No one knows what quite goes on in the minds of some men. The Lisas who need the money will take a chance. They tell themselves: ‘just this once’,” said Rev. Fr. Jack Serate, OFM, a missionary working with migrants, including Filipinos, in the Saitama Diocese.
“Sometimes their timing is off.”
Underside of dream
Serate has spent a lot of time in clubs, factories, hospitals, police stations, jails and courts to be blind to the seamy lining of the Filipino dream of affluence in Japan.
He heads a team of Filipino religious and laity working with the Saitama Catholic International Center. Popularly known as the Open House, the Bishop of Urawa Diocese’s project has been assisting migrants for the past 11 years.
According to lay missionary Neddie Codog, foreign workers take on the “3K” jobs no Japanese will stoop for. This is work regarded as kiken (dangerous), keitsui (difficult), and kitani (dirty).
Also known as the “3Ds,” jobs like collecting garbage and dismantling old buildings are undertaken by migrants who, for roughly P2,500 a day, don’t pick jobs. Codog says many Filipinos work without any gear to protect them from paints and chemicals, a common source of lead poisoning in old houses.
In many kaisha (small company) and kojo (factory), Serate noted accidents occur because few Filipinos are intensively trained to read kanji, the Japanese characters used for all signs and instructions.
While legally hired workers are required to study the language, Sister Marianita Teñoso, FI observed that few employers and Filipinos want to invest the one to three years needed for mastering Shiragana and Hiragana.
In most cases, the Pinoy only learns what is needed to get by in his or her line of work. Thus, an omise dancer will acquire a vocabulary primarily for entertainment. Teñoso observes that when dancers enter liaisons with Japanese men, they may not even be proficient enough to communicate later with their “double children (of mixed parentage).”
Hunted
The greatest risk is courted by migrants who go underground when their papers have expired and were not renewed or if their permits were faked in the first place.
The Open House workers noted that despite immigration officers’ sustained campaign to round up and deport illegal aliens, “thousands” of Filipinos stay on and work. Syndicates extort as much as Y30,000 from illegal aliens.
Although the government stiffly penalizes establishments employing those without work permits, Codog observed that the recession has induced many factories to tap this underground supply of cheap labor. Compared to a legitimate factory worker’s basic salary of about Y1,000, plus benefits, an illegal migrant can be paid only Y900, without the legal non-monetary privileges.
Serate has witnessed the toll of staying just one step ahead of the authorities. Asked how he can endure nights of fitful sleeping, when an alley noise may be caused by a cat or the police, an overstaying Filipino once told the priest that he still lived in fear back in his impoverished hometown. The only difference was that the price of fear in Japan is in hundreds of yen.
Serate remembered that it was not so long ago that the Philippine government said migration would only be a temporary remedy for the local lack of jobs.
With overseas remittances now outstripping foreign direct investment and official development aid, migration is now ensconced as the primary source of cash for developing countries.
Serate, Codog and Teñoso just want to make sure migrants and their families don’t get swept away in the modern-day deluge set off by the Filipino Dream.
(October 10, 2005 issue)
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