Friday, July 06, 2007 Opiniano: Migrants' global forum By Jeremaiah M. Opiniano
ON JULY 9 to 11 in the Belgian capital of Brussels, the international migration of nearly 200 million people will be the subject of heated discussions when the seat of the European Union hosts the First Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD).
This GFMD is an offshoot of a 2006 High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development that the UN General Assembly held for the first time in is New York headquarters. That high-level dialogue squarely tackled the multifarious (and many times, sensitive) issues surrounding the movement of people across borders. Representatives of countries where migrants came from, as well as countries where migrants have settled to work and permanent live there, were present in New York for this Dialogue which immediate past UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for.
Among the results of that dialogue is the staging of annual high-level discussions for policy-makers, civil society organizations, other stakeholders, and most especially migrants. Since it has proven to be difficult to discuss international migration issues in formal global policy-making gatherings such as a UN world conference or even at the UN General Assembly itself, this Global Forum on Migration and Development has become the venue for the articulation of international migration issues (Incidentally, the Philippines will host the Second Global Forum on Migration and Development in 2008. For Brussels, a handful of government officials will grace the governments-only forum while some heads of non-government groups for overseas Filipinos will attend the civil society forum of the GFMD).
What is the significance of Brussels to us Filipinos? It has been a long time that migrants' issues and concerns have been articulated, not until in the last five years when series of reports from multilateral organizations have highlighted the numerous developmental contributions of migrants to their countries of origin (read: over-US$200 billion of remittances). Among the countries that face migration issues are Filipinos, more so that we have an army of some 8.2 million scattered in 193 countries. And the daily toil and triumph of Filipinos abroad have become staple fare in the Filipino consciousness, through media reports and projection.
Meanwhile, the Philippines has acknowledged the important role of overseas Filipinos in the Philippine economy. Before, the talk was about the tragedies that befall abused overseas Filipino workers (especially women) and their families here at home. While these realities still hold true, now the talk is how migrants can be targeted for many, many things-from consumption, investment, or even to help stabilize macro-economic fundamentals. One will not read a headline like this ten years ago: "Domestic workers write off RP debt." Whether one sees this as good or bad, the Philippines has become a migration-dependent economy.
The Philippines' government is very skilled in terms of systematizing the outflow of citizens for overseas work and permanent settlement. This systematic bureaucracy that manages overseas migration of people has become a global renown that other countries are copying the Philippine formula. But when it comes to finding out how to harness the resources of international migration for homeland development, that is where the Philippines has a lot to learn from other countries (examples include India's national bonds for non-resident Indians, Mexico's three-for-one development matching grants program by Mexican migrants and homeland government agencies, and Ireland's socio-economic rise that has attracted citizens abroad to go back home and invest).
These perspectives are what the Global Forum on Migration and Development intends to showcase. Representatives of the Philippine government are not exactly illiterate about the approaches to make international migration work for the benefit of the domestic economy. It is a matter of finding out how will these approaches work, or in general how is the international migration phenomenon strategically placed in the country's national development efforts. Meanwhile, overseas Filipinos themselves and other stakeholders (business, civil society groups) have been trying small steps to repatriate development resources back home-in the hope that the public sees the bigger picture of how these "pockets of hope" (migrant savings, investments, donations, knowledge transfer or "brain gain" activities) can be advantageous to the Philippines.
The bigger picture here is that the efforts to determine how international migration's resources can benefit the Philippine domestic economy remain scattered and patchy at best. One would hear suggestions such as turning the Philippine Postal Bank into a remittance hub, or television networks trying to expand their overseas reach by cashing in on migrants' loneliness through cable television. But perhaps the Philippines still has a difficult time determining an overarching strategy to use migration's resources to her benefit. This strategy, as said many times over, is not just merely receiving remittances and sending more labor out of the country.
It is about how remittances can be used to spur investments, in a tide where many recipients of remittances do not earmark such amounts, or save less monies, for investment (which a recent International Monetary Fund study found out).
It is about how overseas Filipinos can be made more active in the affairs of the motherland (such as former migrants running for public office, or overseas Filipino organizations abroad being active in pursuing efficient basic services delivery in their rural hometowns).
It is about how overseas Filipinos can help transform a feeble Philippine democracy through their activism and involvement, especially when many of these migrants worry less about the country's future beside the rising exodus of Filipinos for abroad.
It is about how the country can steadily rise to its feet with supplementary help from international migration, and with primary development efforts coming from the motherland itself.
These things continue to challenge the Philippines. While the Global Forum on Migration and Development will again remind the Philippines on the vast opportunities from international migration for socio-economic development, it is in the follow-through actions where the country will be tested if international migration continues to be our boon or our bane.
For comments, email them to the Institute for Migration and Development Issues (IMDI, www.filipinodiasporagiving.org) at ofw_philanthropy@yahoo.com.
