Sunday, October 12, 2008 Cabaero: From OFWs to 'expats' By Nini B. Cabaero Beyond 30
AT first they were called “OCWs” or overseas contract workers.
Then, by the 1990s, the term was changed to the more generic and inclusive “OFWs” for overseas Filipino workers to cover all those in the blue or white-collar jobs. Someone also tried to introduce the term “overseas Filipino investor” but this didn’t click.
This time, as if there was need to change the term, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo wants them called as “expatriates.”
She made this “suggestion’ at the start of the media blitz leading to the Global Forum on Migration and Development in Manila to be attended by representatives from 150 countries this October 27 to 30.
“One very, very well-known and well-paid Filipino working overseas says that we should begin to call our overseas Filipinos expatriates, because the nature of their job is increasingly more on skilled professions. And they should be called expatriates because expatriates usually get higher pay than if you just call them workers,” she said in a speech given at the presidential palace last Oct. 7.
“The government and the people honor our overseas Filipinos, whether you call them OFWs, OCWs, or as Dante Ang likes to call them, Overseas Filipino Investors. And I agree that we should begin to call them expatriates rather than OFWs. But in any case, we honor them for their sacrifice and dedication to their work, their family and their nation.”
“We welcome their contribution. But we are working towards the day when Filipinos no longer need to go abroad for a job. For the day that overseas work is just another career option and not the only choice they have to earn a living,” she added.
She is correct that the migration of Filipino workers is no longer limited to blue-collar jobs or those that require manual labor. Over the years, Filipino nurses, doctors, designers, accountants, teachers, artists and technology people have joined the exodus to better jobs abroad.
But to call them expatriates can be confusing. An expatriate is one who has taken up residence in a foreign country.
In the Philippines, those we call expatriates are foreigners who have decided to live here. When a Filipino leaves for a job abroad, he is technically a Filipino expatriate in that country. To those in the Philippines, he or she remains a brother or sister Filipino working overseas.
There are too many confusions going around these days, with the China milk scare and the impending fallout from the decline of the United States economy within which thousands of Filipinos work.
If President Arroyo wants to help, she might as well avoid adding to the confusion and work instead towards making the international migration forum at the end of this month bring benefits and added protection to the eight million Filipinos abroad.
A change in term is mere semantics. But a Filipino worker leaving behind young children is a heartbreaker.
