A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves

[one...two...tree 2,762]

(originally published in 2007)

By JASON DePARLE, NYT

On June 25, 1980 (a date he would remember), a good-natured Filipino pool-maintenance man gathered his wife and five children for an upsetting ride to the Manila airport. At 36, Emmet Comodas had lived a hard life without growing hardened, which was a mixed blessing given the indignities of his poverty. Orphaned at 8, raised on the Manila streets where he hawked cigarettes, he had hustled a job at a government sports complex and held it for nearly two decades. On the spectrum of Filipino poverty, that alone marked him as a man of modest fortune. But a monthly salary of $50 did not keep his family fed.

Home was a one-room, scrap-wood shanty in a warren of alleys and stinking canals, hidden by the whitewashed walls of an Imelda Marcos beautification campaign. He had borrowed money at usurious rates to start a tiny store, which a thief had plundered. His greatest fears centered on his 11-year-old daughter, Rowena, who had a congenital heart defect that turned her lips blue and fingernails black and who needed care he could not afford. After years of worrying over her frail physique, Emmet dropped to his moldering floor and asked God for a decision: take her or let him have her.

God answered in a mysterious way. Not long after, Emmet's boss offered him a pool-cleaning job in Saudi Arabia. Emmet would make 10 times as much as he made in Manila. He would also live 4,500 miles from his family in an Islamic autocracy where stories of abused laborers were rife. He accepted on the spot. His wife, Tita, was afraid of the slum where she soon would be raising children alone, and she knew that overseas workers often had affairs. She also knew their kids ate better because of the money the workers sent home. She spent her last few pesos for admission to an airport lounge where she could wave at the vanishing jet, then went home to cry and wait.

Two years later, on Aug. 2, 1982 (another date he would remember), Emmet walked off the returning flight with chocolate for the kids, earrings for Tita and a bag of duty-free cigarettes, his loneliness abroad having made him a chain smoker. His 2-year-old son, Boyet, considered him a stranger and cried at his touch, though as Emmet later said, "I was too happy to be sad." He gave himself a party, replaced the shanty's rotted walls and put on a new roof. Then after three months at home, he left for Saudi Arabia again. And again. And again and again: by the time Emmet ended the cycle and came home for good, he had been gone for nearly two decades. Boyet was grown.

Deprived of their father while sustained by his wages, the Comodas children spent their early lives studying Emmet's example. Now they have copied it. All five of them, including Rowena, grew up to become overseas workers. Four are still working abroad. And the middle child, Rosalie — a nurse in Abu Dhabi — faces a parallel to her father's life that she finds all too exact. She has an 18-month-old back in the Philippines who views her as a stranger and resists her touch. What started as Emmet's act of desperation has become his children's way of life: leaving in order to live.

About 200 million migrants from different countries are scattered across the globe, supporting a population back home that is as big if not bigger. Were these half-billion or so people to constitute a state — migration nation — it would rank as the world's third-largest. While some migrants go abroad with Ph.D.'s, most travel as Emmet did, with modest skills but fearsome motivation. The risks migrants face are widely known, including the risk of death, but the amounts they secure for their families have just recently come into view. Migrants worldwide sent home an estimated $300 billion last year — nearly three times the world's foreign-aid budgets combined. These sums — "remittances" — bring Morocco more money than tourism does. They bring Sri Lanka more money than tea does.

The numbers, which have doubled in the past five years, have riveted the attention of development experts who once paid them little mind. One study after another has examined how private money, in the form of remittances, might serve the public good. A growing number of economists see migrants, and the money they send home, as a part of the solution to global poverty.

Yet competing with the literature of gain is a parallel literature of loss. About half the world's migrants are women, many of whom care for children abroad while leaving their own children home. "Your loved ones across that ocean . . . ," Nadine Sarreal, a Filipina poet in Singapore, warns:

Will sit at breakfast and try not to gaze

Where you would sit at the table.

Meals now divided by five

Instead of six, don't feed an emptiness.

The Comodases with their granddaughter Precious Lara.

Red-Carpet Treatment O.F.W.'s, or Overseas Filipino Workers, are often treated like heroes upon their return to Manila because of all the money they send home.;

Christmas Bonus Globe Telecom is just one of many Filipino companies that award prizes to overseas Filipino workers and their families.

....(edited)

Nearly 10 percent of the country's 89 million people live abroad. About 3.6 million are O.F.W.'s — contract workers. Another 3.2 million have migrated permanently, largely to the United States — and 1.3 million more are thought to be overseas illegally. (American visas, which are probably the hardest to get, are also the most coveted, both for the prosperity they promise and because the Philippines, a former colony, retains an unrequited fascination with the U.S.) There are a million O.F.W.'s in Saudi Arabia alone, followed by Japan, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Taiwan. Yet with workers in at least 170 countries, the O.F.W.'s are literally everywhere, including the high seas. About a quarter of the world's seafarers come from the Philippines. The Greek word for maid is Filipineza. The "modern heroes" send home $15 billion a year, a seventh of the country's gross domestic product. Addressing a Manila audience, Rick Warren, the evangelist, called Filipino guest workers the Josephs of their day — toiling in the homes of modern Pharaohs to liberate their people.

....(edited)

While the Philippines has exported labor for at least 100 years, the modern system took shape three decades ago under Ferdinand Marcos. Clinging to power through martial law, he faced soaring unemployment, a Communist insurgency and growing urban unrest. Exporting idle Filipinos promised a safety valve and a source of foreign exchange. With a 1974 decree ("to facilitate and regulate the movement of workers in conformity with the national interest"), Marcos sent technocrats circling the globe in search of labor contracts. Annual deployments rose more than tenfold in a decade, to 360,000.

rest of article here.

[Psoas10 17]

It is kinda sad. Where I live the Sakadas have left a very big legacy. When I was in Laoag, everyone I met had relatives in Waipahu, Kalihi, Ewa Beach, or even Puhi and Hanamaulu. There presence is still felt here today. They where somewhat lucky, as they became citizens and brought their family here. Then this cycle still repeats to this day. Most Filipinos come here through their families not through marrying haoles. It just shows the hard working spirit of most Filipinos.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

It is kinda sad. Where I live the Sakadas have left a very big legacy. When I was in Laoag, everyone I met had relatives in Waipahu, Kalihi, Ewa Beach, or even Puhi and Hanamaulu. There presence is still felt here today. They where somewhat lucky, as they became citizens and brought their family here. Then this cycle still repeats to this day. Most Filipinos come here through their families not through marrying haoles. It just shows the hard working spirit of most Filipinos.

Yep. We went to visit some distant relatives of my wife who live here in So. Cal this last weekend. The husband and wife were both RN's in the PH and then moved to the U.S. in 1980. It took the husband 4 years to finally pass the exam here for RN, but now they've a beautiful home, they've put two kids through college paid with cash and they send their youngest to a Catholic school that is $12g's a year. They told us that an RN coming out of school here in California can expect about $36/hr and work three, 12 hour shifts a week. I know it's a generalization, but Filipinos that come here to America seem to find the way to providing a better life for their children. Hopefully, the second generation won't lose that hard working spirit as they become Americanized.

[=FoxyBLUE= 2]

SAD but true. Our father left us when I was 2 and my younger sister 1. Afraid that he might not support us financially, he sacrificed and went to Saudi Arabia as a Communication Engineer, which is 5 times bigger than his salary when he was working in the Philippines.

Imagine leaving your 2 and 1 year old daughters and not seeing them grow, not be able to hug them when they cry because of an imaginary ghost on their closet, a call from them during christmas and new year just to say thank you for the balikbayan box you send, or a call from them that they recieved an award or a star in school but you weren't there to share that happiness with them.

I'm an 80's baby, and we dont have email, webcams or yahoo messenger,or skype before. We just call my father once a week or send him mix tape with us singing and saying how much we love him.

I remembered the time that all me and my siblings do is ask something from him (spoiled little brats as we call it) we know that he won't say "no", that is when I realized how selfish we were to him.

And now that I'm already here in US, I feel what my father felt when he was away from us. He must be thinking of going home a gazillion times, but never did because all he thinks about is giving us a good future.

So, for those people who have parents or loved ones sacrificed being away from them to give them a better future , I salute them! And my prayers are with them....

They are the true HEROES! and im glad we have our own hero at home

[one...two...tree 2,762]

SAD but true. Our father left us when I was 2 and my younger sister 1. Afraid that he might not support us financially, he sacrificed and went to Saudi Arabia as a Communication Engineer, which is 5 times bigger than his salary when he was working in the Philippines.

Imagine leaving your 2 and 1 year old daughters and not seeing them grow, not be able to hug them when they cry because of an imaginary ghost on their closet, a call from them during christmas and new year just to say thank you for the balikbayan box you send, or a call from them that they recieved an award or a star in school but you weren't there to share that happiness with them.

I'm an 80's baby, and we dont have email, webcams or yahoo messenger,or skype before. We just call my father once a week or send him mix tape with us singing and saying how much we love him.

I remembered the time that all me and my siblings do is ask something from him (spoiled little brats as we call it) we know that he won't say "no", that is when I realized how selfish we were to him.

And now that I'm already here in US, I feel what my father felt when he was away from us. He must be thinking of going home a gazillion times, but never did because all he thinks about is giving us a good future.

So, for those people who have parents or loved ones sacrificed being away from them to give them a better future , I salute them! And my prayers are with them....

They are the true HEROES! and im glad we have our own hero at home

For you, your sis and father.

My wife's eldest sister has 3 children, and her husband, who is Filipino, was working as a truck driver in Saudi Arabia. I don't how they managed the separation for so long. He would come home maybe once or twice a year. They are all together now finally, living in Canada, but the oldest child is 12 and had lived most of his life without his father around.