[ just a spur-of-the-moment blog, no research involved here. thank you Mikee Santos of FIRST Union for your timely post. sorry for any misspellings or typographical errors, salamat po sa pagbasa. ]
IT’S NOT UNCOMMON for Filipinos to pin all their hopes and dreams onto one contract: an agreement to work for another overseas, in return for substantial payment for services rendered. In fact, throughout Asia and the rest of the developing world, seeking employment beyond home shores is one of the few if not only alternatives to a better life: learn a trade (or skill), magbanat ng buto (work your bones or limbs) and sign up for the first job overseas, send money home, save a little, come back home, repeat cycle. Filipinos just seem to be some of the more popular work migrants around, mainly because of our specific skills and hardworking nature (a topic for another post) but all over the world, people migrate, temporarily or permanently, in search of good jobs for a better life.
Which is why it is particularly unforgivable and evil for people to take advantage of the dream to work abroad and turn it into a fraudulent, money-making scheme that drains the life savings or worse, the future credit and financing potential of vulnerable, low socio-economic class workers and their families. Unofficially called by media the “cash-for-jobs” scam targeting naive and less-educated work visa aspirants, it is particularly effective in the following ways:
it lures potential migrants in with the power of the First World Dream. Along with the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia, New Zealand is perennially one of the top migrant destinations for anyone outside. it seems almost too good to be true, to literally “purchase” a job, complete with a work visa with little to no qualifications, no language requirements, and with a clear though unspoken pathway to residency. All for the suddenly reasonable sum of US$20,000. Sell the farm, sell the cow, sign away your inheritance, everything is worth it if it means the chance to work in New Zealand… except that it’s not. There’s no job. There’s no long term employment. And certainly, no pathway to a New Zealand passport, not by a long shot.
it takes advantage of the natural isolation that comes with working abroad. After the guest worker touches down at the airport and clears customs and immigration, he is largely on his own. it’s just him and his job. Oh sure, there’s the job broker’s counterpart who picks him up from the airport, but only to make sure he’s settled in his flat, for which he’s pays usually double the average rent, and from which both the employer and the agent earn commissions. (in Tagalog it’s called ginigisa sa sariling mantika, but it’s common practice among all migrant workers). Because he barely speaks the local language, knows nothing about the law, and knows no one, not even his own countrymen, he is truly vulnerable, and easily taken advantage of. And this leads to…
the guest worker’s own kind (kababayan) using his trusting nature against him. But at least, the guest worker sees the one familiar name that links the strange land and his own: that of his contact, usually speaking his language and looking like him.
But that is where the familiarity and kinship ends. The contact is usually a wolf in sheep’s clothing, who will take advantage of him for all he’s got, taking the bulk of his wages and leaving him scraps, with barely enough to send home after debts and chits are settled.
He was lured into the scam in the first place, because he trusted the sweet words and slick talk of his countrymen, and that proved to be his undoing.
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And this is for the legal and jobs gotten without fraud. Those poor souls in the video you see above? They were doomed even before they boarded the plane to Auckland.
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Right now Your Loyal kaBayan has only two wishes regarding this growing situation: First, that the victims of the Jobs-for-Cash scam are able to avail of Migrant Exploitation Protection Visas, through the intervention of their embassies, and Second, that the magnitude of this kind of fraud hasn’t reached the philippines.
