ENDURING slashed incomes for nearly two years bit hard on 37-year-old single mother Veniel (not her real name) and her family.
She boarded that June 2020 mercy flight from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, while the first variant of SARS-CoV-2 lurked. Upon her return, she received P20,000 from government’s cash grants for returnee overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), plus another P5,000 from the Social Security System.
That return meant the end of wiring P12,000 monthly to Veniel’s family of 14.
That P25,000 in total aid, plus some little savings that Veniel brought home, still weren’t enough. So was online selling. Sister Bee, a domestic worker and mother of one in Pateros, sends the bulk of her P6,500 salary plus extra incomes from selling prepaid mobile phone credit. Another sister, Ida, also a domestic worker, sends the bulk of her P7,000 salary.
“Life’s oh-so hard [napakahirap],” Veniel says. “I needed to go out of the country again, immediately.”
Diminished incomes did push many of the 2,348,098 returnee OFWs to seriously consider repeating their overseas migration. And once destination countries’ borders reopened and their labor markets went back to hiring foreign labor starting in 2022, these returnees due to Covid-19 took the chance.
Returning
The Philippines went back to its economic strongholds —labor migration and foreign remittances— these past two years. Four years since Covid-19 put human mobility to a screeching halt, the Philippines and her army of workers went back migrating.
Newly hired and rehired OFWs in foreign lands and in ocean-plying vessels reached 2,330,720 in 2023, says fresh data from the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW). That’s a 323.9-percent increase from pandemic-hit 2020; only 549,841 OFWs went out that year.
That 2.33 million number of deployed OFWs last year is a 55-year record since the Philippines started recording departing overseas contract workers in 1969 (3,694).
The “pandemic returnees” waited for those moments when their former employers would call them up and when it’s safe to travel again. Seafarer Ylrem Dhi Barbo, 30, waited to go back on board since his savings dried up in 2022—and his mother needed to sustain therapy sessions given her multiple sclerosis.
Ylrem’s back on a ship, as an oiler, last year.
Recovering lost ground
In 2021, analysts like University of the Philippines political scientist Dr. Jorge Tigno projected that prepandemic migrant deployment “will not return overnight.” Prepandemic year 2019 was a benchmark: the Philippines sent out 2,156,742 OFWs, the previous highest number of deployments.
But given the country’s own economic recovery efforts, Tigno writes that “the Philippines needs labor migration to weather through future economic crises, as well as to address the socioeconomic issues caused by the pandemic.”
When countries slowly reopened their borders and labor markets, the Philippines took advantage of such opportunities, says economist Alvin Ang of Ateneo de Manila University. With the 2023 record deployment, he thinks increasing migrant workers’ deployments “will continue but will normalize in the coming years.”
But is this a case of “revenge migration,” like “revenge travel” for tourism? No, says Maruja Asis of the nonprofit Scalabrini Migration Center, who describes it rather as a post-pandemic “demand for migrant workers in various economic sectors.”
Host countries went back to rebuilding their economies. Some countries felt the stress of having more older people and fewer workers. And just like prior to Covid-19, citizens in host countries still shun certain types of work, like farming.
All these drove post-pandemic migration, Asis adds.
Recouping
Estimates using the country’s Family Income and Expenditures Survey show that OFW households earned an annual average of P168,150 in foreign remittances in 2021. That’s more than P30,000 below what they earned from abroad in 2018 (P201,161.20 on average).
Like many Filipino families, OFW households “are trying to rebuild their lives past the pandemic,” says Asis. “Returning to work abroad is one of those household strategies [and a preferred option] for employment.”
Returning to the United States in 2022 as a caregiver was “my ultimate decision,” says 44-year-old Beverly (not her real name). Once the US loosened its travel and border protocols, Beverly’s mind carried no second thoughts: The US “is where my bread and butter is.”
The Philippine government has been managing the overseas exodus of workers and of citizens wishing to settle permanently elsewhere since 1974 through their country’s Labor Code and the government agencies past and present tasked to ensure safe and orderly migration through regular channels. But the prepandemic era had its share of tribulations for OFWs: abuses, labor exploitations, trafficking, contract substitution, illegal recruitment, and many more.
The pandemic, says Asis, only but provided a lesson that mattered: one’s health. During the early months of lockdowns across the world, mental health became a key concern for foreign workers and seafarers.
While the two-year-old DMW continued previous decades of migrant worker protection measures, Asis says telehealth can broaden OFWs’ access to health services. On the other hand, DMW may have to address rampant online recruitment that increases risks of irregular migration and trafficking, Asis adds.
Readying to embark
Meanwhile, as the Philippines moves forward from the pandemic, so are workers from the countryside who missed earning the dollars that provided them comfort.
Former seafarer Ed, 53, from Pampanga, is waiting for that chance. That chance is worth around US$1,000 to US$1,500 a month. “I always think of my family.”
That second chance is what Mary Campit, 47, awaits, too: leaving Moncada, Tarlac, and heading to a new overseas destination armed with her previous experience as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia, that ended in 2022.
Campit’s siblings and her farmer-husband opposed her decision to go, but the desire to improve her children’s living conditions didn’t stop her. Once son Joshua returns to Moncada from his own work abroad, Mary’s next. Her youngest child has to finish school.
“My siblings wanted me to back out. I said, ‘Can you give me P20,000 a month? Can you send my children to school?’” Mary told her siblings.
“You and your families have dreams. I have dreams, too.”
The OFW Journalism Consortium is a nonprofit news service writing stories on overseas Filipinos and the country’s migration phenomenon. This pooled story stems from a story requirement in a journalism course at the University of Santo Tomas—Reporting on Global Migration—that the OFW Journalism Consortium is handling.
Image credits: NONIE REYES