Passion For Reason.
Passion For Reason :
Why restrict the overseas Filipino professional?
First posted 03:07am (Mla time) Mar 24, 2006
By Raul Pangalangan
Inquirer
Editor's Note: Published on Page A12 of the March 24, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
“REGULATE the exodus of skills and talents! Keep the best and the brightest at home!” screamed the banner of a full-page, paid ad that appeared in the Inquirer the other day.
That call was issued by a group calling itself the Fair Trade Alliance (FTA). It asks that we regulate the migration of Filipino professionals and highly skilled workers.
I share their concerns, but not their conclusion. You can only control people’s dreams at your own peril. Fair trade means that traders must be free to compete in the open market, and workers should be just as free to seek the highest value for their labor, locally or abroad. What is sauce for the capitalist goose should be sauce for the proletarian gander, even those whose labors are mental and not menial.
“Overseas employment, the nation’s economic lifeline, is turning into its gravedigger.” The figures indeed are staggering: 5 million overseas migrant workers and 3 million immigrants, sending remittances to support one-fourth of the population. The FTA warns that the continued outflow of talent has begun to “decimate [our] few but vital industries” and jeopardize basic services like health and education. The depletion of “mission-critical skills” has imperiled our hospitals, with a low nurse-to-patient ratio. And, most critical of all (and which may explain the full-page ad), our aviation industry has suffered from “foreign poaching” of trained pilots and aviation mechanics, and, in terms of investments in “experiential learning,” the FTA estimates losses of P1 million for each pirated Filipino pilot and around P500,000 for each purloined mechanic.
The portents are scary indeed, but the remedies are just as worrisome. The FTA proposes the “stricter regulation of the outflow of critical skills and talents in crucial and strategic industries.” That is technocrat talk for “Catch them at the airport.” A National Service Act will restrict the migration of “mission-critical professionals,” and require them to render some sort of compulsory community service for a few years.
There is, to start with, a minor hitch known as the Bill of Rights, which ensures every Filipino’s “right to travel.” International human rights treaties speak of it as the “right to leave and to return,” and the Supreme Court held that since the Constitution merely said “to travel,” that excluded the “to return” part. Well anyway, that’s what it took to bar Ferdinand Marcos from returning to the Philippines. By whatever interpretation, the right “to travel” still includes the right “to leave,” and that is the only part of the Bill of Rights that any aspiring Filipino illegal alien cares about right now.
At best, then, any return-service requirement needs to be custom-tailored to the nation’s needs. The period of compulsory service should be fixed and limited, and the covered professions must be confined solely to those truly in crisis.
However, if the problem is the drying up of the supply of professionals, then by all means let us increase the supply. If there is a shortage of nurses, let us open more nursing schools and train more nurses. After all, there are 84 million Filipinos; if even just 5 percent of us are of trainable age and competence, that’s already 4 million skilled brains. And if there is real demand overseas for their God-given talents, let them go where those talents are justly remunerated.
Perhaps the real problem is our schools, and our attitude toward diplomas and degrees. Students learn fancy skills for non-existent jobs, and end up jobless or underemployed. They learn Shakespeare in the land of Pepe and Pilar. Either we match our schools’ supply with the job market’s demand, or we accept it as perfectly legitimate -- as indeed it is -- that college students learn Shakespeare and then affect a Midwestern American accent in a call center.
I think the real fear is that to increase the supply of skilled brainworkers, we must settle for the lesser brained, and that the only way to maintain quality control is to limit access to the professions. I firmly believe that we can democratize admissions without diluting academic standards. Having been a teacher for more than 20 years, I have no illusions about Filipino students. But I have no illusions, either, about admissions tests: Maybe Albert Einstein might have flunked the UPCAT or NMAT admission tests -- after all, he said that “imagination is more important than knowledge.”
The FTA is correct that a return-service requirement should cover the societal investment in their education, but to enforce it by law would only create a class of bright but frustrated Filipinos chafing at their chains and hating the world, a perfect recruiting pool for terrorists and coup plotters.
But there is nothing to stop us from enforcing a return-service obligation, not by law, but by voluntary contract. For example, professors of the University of the Philippines (UP) who are sent abroad on fellowships at the university’s expense are tied down to a return-service requirement. By and large, professors have honored this obligation. There are some “Reneging Fellows,” as they are officially called, but I trust that the university’s lawyers diligently check on these deadbeat academics that have in effect run away with taxpayers’ money.
This system of voluntary contracts must extend to UP’s own graduates. Their education is heavily subsidized, but that subsidy is invisible. It leads to a sense of entitlement by the beneficiaries (indeed, a Darwinian sense of achievement that they beat others to the subsidy), and a lack of appreciation for the taxpayers who shouldered the true cost of their education.
It takes a village to raise a child. Then let the child know how much thanks he owes the village.
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