BY JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO
Institute for Migration and Development Issues
(Continued from April 23-24, 2022)
BECAUSE overseas migration reveals itself as a multi-faceted phenomenon, other agencies then got involved: Departments of Agriculture, Education, Science and Technology, Trade and Industry, Health, and their bureaus and attached agencies. Even the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) came into the fray and mandated provincial, municipal and city local government units (LGUs) in May 2020 to set up “DILG OFW desks”. Come the mid-2010s, finally the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) explicitly devoted a separate chapter for overseas Filipinos in the Philippine Development Plan (PDP).
All these governmental and policy developments have seen the emergence of overseas migration as a major phenomenon in the country’s socio-economic and cultural life.
Over the decades also, overseas migration has evolved. The Philippines continues to implement quick-response efforts to assist OFWs in distress and in need (which the pandemic further made evident). But there are also other efforts: regulating the growing recruitment industry; directing remittances to development and to safe, fortuitous investment and entrepreneurial products and activities; looking at the manpower and other development needs of the country; among others.
Let us return to the DMW. The full opening of this Department in 2024 comes as the Philippines celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 1974 Labor Code, which formally began facilitative overseas labor migration and its regulation by the country.
Some migration analysts looked at the provisions of RA 11641 and noticed that most of the provisions may have overemphasized the regulation of overseas employment. It’s like going back to the 1970s, one female migration analyst said, if one looks at Section 6 (“Powers and Functions”) of RA 11641. Reintegration was mentioned though in Section 17. Meanwhile, an AKSYON Fund (Agarang Kalinga at Serbisyo para sa mga OFW na Nangangailangan) is to be set up at the DMW to provide legal and other forms of assistance to OFWs. That is while DFA will retain its ATN funds and its Legal Assistance Fund “for the benefit of other overseas Filipinos and for consular assistance services”.
Secondly, will the DMW address long-perceived “coordination confusions” by migration-related agencies? Even with the multiple government agencies involved in helping OFWs and other overseas Filipinos, globally the Philippines is remarked as the “gold standard” among origin countries in managing overseas migration.
In 2015, a “Joint Manual of Operations in Providing Assistance to Migrant Workers and Other Filipinos Overseas” was issued by DOLE, DFA, DOH, DSWD, POEA and OWWA in the hopes that overlapping services for OFWs will be avoided. That Joint Manual may have not worked out, which is why the DMW brandishes itself as a new Philippine approach to manage overseas migration.
DMW also represents a consolidated front to highlight the needs of overseas workers in relation to the other development needs of the country. But immigrants/permanent residents and Filipinos naturalized abroad also want a stake in their homeland’s development. How the forthcoming new government puts forward newer ideas to serve overseas Filipinos (not just migrant workers or OFWs) and to maximize their financial resources and their well-being to benefit their families and the Philippines will be interesting to see.
Admittedly, there was division (even among migrant advocates) in terms of having RA 11641 passed or not. One side says coordination confusions will be diminished through this consolidation of relevant offices into one department. The other side says addressing coordination confusions through better coordination may do the trick.
Now, the Department of Migrant Workers is here. On the part of ordinary overseas Filipino workers, they just want a more responsive, less bureaucratic government helping them out. If this DMW formula works starting in 2024 and in the post-pandemic years to follow, only then will the Philippines see her “migration and development management” efforts leading for the better.
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The Institute for Migration and Development Issues is a nonprofit thinktank doing policy research, databanking and social commentaries on migration and development issues in the Philippines. Email: ofw_philanthropy@yahoo.com/PN
