BAGUIO CITY — The Philippines has drawn up about 70 bilateral labor agreements globally to protect overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and their jobs amidst a harsh anti-migrant stance prevailing in parts of the world, including Europe and the United States under the second term of Donald Trump, the administrator of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration said at a Friday (Feb. 20) briefing here.
These agreements, which OWWA chief Patricia Yvonne Caunan described as the “most numerous” compared to other labor-exporting countries, meant that the current anti-migrant environment abroad should not disrupt Filipino overseas employment, which is projected to increase in the coming decades from 2.7 million migrant workers tallied by the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) in 2025 to potentially 8 to 10 million by 2040.
The current overseas Filipino workforce is dominated by career workers who have worked abroad for decades, but population growth suggests many more Filipinos will seek work in other countries despite government initiatives to “end the cycle” of overseas labor deployment, said Caunan, a lawyer and a former DMW official who oversaw international policy and migrant governance.
Caunan said future demand for nurses, other health workers and caregivers will not likely change and may in fact grow because of the aging populations in the US and Europe, who will need Filipino-brand services that come with “smiles and tender-loving care” often given to the elderly in every Philippine households, Caunan said.
“There are countries that are aging rapidly so if previous overseas job orders are for 100 caregivers and nurses… that might change in a couple of years to 1000 job orders because of our soft skills,” she said, which serves as well for employment in hotels and other hospitality services and manufacturing.
“Almost all nations are talking to us and even if there are governments that have been more conservative about migration they say ‘except labor from the Philippines,’ ” Caunan said, citing Hungary which has a strict migrant restriction policy but has exempted Filipino caregivers, nurses and other professionals.
Because OWWA has not processed the repatriation of any Filipino worker amidst the polarizing immigration crackdowns in American cities, Philippine officials continue to treat this situation as an internal political issue although labor offices here and in various embassies have been keeping an eye on developments there, she said.
Caunan said the government has also began tapping into labor markets in Europe, such as Croatia’s rising hotel and resort industry. “I can confirm that (despite the immigration debates there) we have continuous and fruitful partnerships with Europe,” she said, among them the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Cyprus, and Malta.
Earlier in a Jan. 9 briefing, Secretary Dante Ang II of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas said Filipino professionals have not yet been impacted by tightened US rules on immigration and migrant workers that have been enforced by Trump.
Many Filipinos rely on remittances from family members abroad, which averages $38 billion annually, “the equivalent of 8.3 percent of our gross domestic product,” Ang said.
by Vincent Cabreza (Originally published on Inquirer.Net)
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