A Little More on Jobs
Recently I’ve had some very good discussions on my weekly column for Bob Martin’s Living i8n the Philippines magazine column, “North Wind” regarding jobs. I decided to move the discussion over here as judging from the comments I got there is quite a bit of interest in this subject.
In particular, today, I want to talk about OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker) jobs for both my Filipino readers and my Western readers who may find themselves in the position of being asked for advice or even direct help in getting relatives or family friends on their way to a job overseas.
First of all, let me add a caution or two that some of you may not be aware of. There are a lot of companies here in the Philippines who seem, in my opinion, to be taking advantage of their fellow Filipinos in a big way. Yes, I agree this is a sad state of affairs, and yes the government should be doing something to fix this problem (in fairness, many government officials are engaged in correcting such issues), it is terrible that people should take advantage of others, and on and on. Agree to all of this.
But today is today, not tomorrow (tomorrow, by the way, never comes, so stop waiting for it) and we are in the real world, not the ideal one. A person with a healthy skepticism of false claims and a grounding in simple facts should be able to prevent themselves from getting cheated on these deals … here are some simple suggestions:
- The number one red flag are firms that demand big payments from potential job applicants up front. Legitimate firms filling job vacancies overseas are well paid for each successful “body’ they recruit, there is no reason they should be extracting ridiculous fees from the “bodies” themselves. You do not want to get yourself into debt before you even see a dollar or rial or yen of earnings. I know there are “square shooter” firms out there. here’s a sample from a firm advertising heavily in the Philip0ines right now as we speak:
We are a NO-FEE Charging Entity.
We do not extract placement fees, processing fees, nor salary deductions from all our candidates. We also ensure our world-renowned clients are the best providers of career employment for the Filipino. In return, we choose only the best qualified candidates for these jobs for our esteemed clientele worldwide.
- If the firm you are thinking of doing business with does not have a similar policy, ask them why they don’t? In the end, I can’t make the decision for you but I firmly believe it is possible for an honest worker to get a ob honestly.
- Every Filipino citizen who complies with Filipino law has the right to a passport and necessary travel documents from the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (equivalent in principle to the US State Department). Not long ago a relation, a young man with little money and no ‘favored family’ status went to the DFA to get a passport urgently needed so he could go for a job interview in another country. He paid off no one, just filled up the forms, supplied the required documents and paid the fees (including a legal ‘express lane fee’), and got his passport again just as an American citizen would do to get a US passport in a hurry. There’s a deep seated belief held by many Filipinos’ that they somehow are not ‘entitled” to their own government’s citizen services. In my experience, this is just not so. “Fixers” and other third-party agents are usually unnecessary and at times can even be counter-productive.
- Follow the law. Sounds simple, but if you dig into the many annual cases of abuse of Filipino workers overseas you will frequently find that the worker left the country illegally on a tourist visa, failed to use a government licensed employment agency or availed of some other method to ‘sneak past’ the government established safeguards. It’s particularly sad to me that thousands of underage girls are somehow “spirited’ out of the country every year in hopes of work as a domestic helper. Many of these young women find themselves in virtually slave labor situations where the employers mistreat them and cheat them on their pay. Since they are illegal in one or more aspects they can’t usually get the protection normally offered by the law. A disturbingly large percentage wind up in even more dire straights … locked up against their will in a strange land, saddled with massive illegal debts claimed by the creeps who tricked them into these so called “jobs” and forced to literally “whore” their way out of debt. Bottom line: this is virtually does not happen to legally processed and properly registered and regulated OFW’s Do Not Cut Corners, or allow a friend or relative to get in this situation. The law exists to safeguard the worker, ‘sneaking out’ is very seldom worth it.
Here’s just one example I found today of what appears to be a legitimate firm adverting heavily in the Manila Bulletin. Notice that they are proud of not charging employee fees, they have jobs in many countries, and in the jobs I saw to day for both KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and Canada, they had a number of skilled and semi skilled jobs with no nonsensical “must be single, attractive and under 25 requirements and no educational inflation such as requiring a master’s degree to drive a truck. I furnish the link strictly for informational purposes … I have no connection to this company nor can I vouch for them personally, but merely as an illustration that honest, straightforward routes to OFW employment exists. Caveat emptor.
Related posts:
- More About Foreigner Jobs in the Philippines
- Proof That My Philippine Business Advice is Sound
- What, Jobs Again?
- Musings On Jobs and .ph
- More About Jobs In The Philippines
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October 13th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
The rip-off placement companies infest the Philippines. It makes my blood boil to think of how they steal from thousands of desperate people. My sister-in-law was badly-treated in Saudi and had to borrow money from my wife to fly home, and she was working as a registered nurse. My nephew asked my wife for $4,000 to pay to a placement company. Even if we had had the money we still would have refused.
Interesting insight that Filipinos often feel they have to pay a fixer for things they are entitled to like passports and other documents. I know these “fixers” find lots of customers at the LTO. I never heard that they played their games at the passport office.
October 14th, 2008 at 12:49 am
I once watched a documentary film in NZ about OFWs. I would imagine that this show was probably banned from airing in Philippine channels. This was the first time I’ve seen that there are these so called “agents” going around the countryside (bukid) and advertising to those poor Filipino folks, making their “eyes bulge out, their tongues hanging”, desperate to grab the almighty dollar! Wow. The government probably encourage this, because the biggest contributor to the economy here is the OFW money being sent in. I dread the day when we start facing the realities of brain drain, or the lack of skilled workers here because they’ve all been exported out.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:19 am
@pogidaga: Thanks for commenting. Indeed,t aht %2&%$#@! “fixer” syndrome is an attitude that needs to be overcome if the Philippine sis ever to be able to vercome itself and be all that it can be. I am not naive or dumb. I know there is corruption here … hey I used to work on the docks in the USA and if you think there is no big-time corruption in the US then there’s a reality check needed there, too. But because there are problems that may be encountered doe snot mean that one shouldn’t try it the ‘right way’ first.
The passport incidents happen all the time. People hire a ‘fixer’ and sometimes the fixer is really a forger and just manufacturers a passport. That is what happened in the case I know of. The traveler tried to leave the country and got nabbed for having a phony document … whuch was confiscated by the NBI, and the person only escaped prosecution by going through a lot ofl legal gyrations. How much simpler would it have been to do it right.
BTW, you can read about me geting my driver’s license at:
http://philfaqs.com/them-thats-living-there/a-visit-to-the-lto-for-my-us-readers/
It is _not_ necessary to use a fixer. In act at the main LTO office in Quezon City where I went, the ‘fixers’ are kept out via an armed guard and the waiting room and offices where the license applications are processed are contibnuoulsy monitored by CCTV cameras and the LTO head has vowed to fire bribe-takers.
Likewise I take care of my own Immingration business at the Angles City office. There are no ‘fixers’ allowedin theplace an I have never been approached ny one.
What you do get is continual advice from Filipino friends that the various offcies will try to screw you because \yu are a foreigner and thus you can’t do it on your own.
Well, again, I’m not a fool … I might get trouble some day, but so far doing things straight up has worked out well for me. My expereince so far has been that Filipinos think less of their own country than I do … I expect the best and treat bad things as an exception, the prevailing attitude seems to be that every dealing with a government office will be disater and only a very rare success by rare exception.
In the end it is more fun to travel hopefully, or so I believe.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:27 am
@Ellen: I know. I’m using this forum to occassinally bring some of this to light. I know of poor farmers who have quite literally been forced to sell the carabao to pay a job placement company and then, of course, never gotten a job.
The reality is, not everyone is qualified for any OFW job. But unscrupulous companies just ‘feed on the need’ and take their money anyway. As my example shows, legitimate employment companies are paid by the employers, if you are being asked a fee just to apply you are very likely being scammed.
I know that both you and your husband are successful OFW’s (or ONW ;-)) and there is nothing wrong with seeking to better ones self with overseas work … heck I spent many years working outside the US. But the current philiosphy in the Philippines that seems to treat it as the country’s very salvation is wrong, wrong, wrong.
October 14th, 2008 at 4:47 am
Yes you are right, there is nothing wrong with going overseas to try and get a better life or work. However, is it always the case? Quite a few are brainwashed to go thinking so. My high school friend, who is now in Hongkong, as a dentist told me that 9 out of 10 of her OFW patients have a sad story. Not that they are abused, but that they (all women) are “forced” to leave their husbands and children behind so they can earn more money outside to send back. In a lot of these cases, the husbands end up with no initiative to find work here, thinking that the money sent in is bottomless. They have dollars so they are RICH. They end up drinking, partying, inviting the whole village over to eat, drink and be merry, showing off. They have kabits (mistresses) and they leave the children in the care of the grandparents. The poor wife is always the last to know. There they are - religiously sending money over thinking they are helping the children go through school, putting food into their mouths. To top it all, the husbands lie to them to send in MORE MORE MORE, because they need it for “repairing the house”, “buy medications”, etc.
I am not really an idealist. I realize Philippines have a lot of poor people and if they can go elsewhere and get better jobs and a better life, that is good. For some who abuse the system, there will be those who are taken advantage of. But there are still plenty more who have reaped the benefits and end up with a happy ending. I just hope there are more cases like that than what is being portrayed in the documentary.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:47 am
@Ellen: I often worry that my writings will label me as an unrealistic dreamer. I am not, I’m a poorly educated man who has worked through an education 9in the School of Hard Knocks for 40 years … and not graduated yet
But there are many times I really can’t belive the lack of vison or hope in so many people … US or Filipino. A common expression in some Filipno familes . Ay, patay na! .. loosely translate, OMG, we’re dead now, seems to dominate thinking.
Rome can’t be built overnight and years of chronic neglect can’t be undone in an afternoon, but I still think it is worth my while to try. It may be the best choice or even the only choice at some times for some people … hey, I would migrate to Antarctica to be a posso negro man if that’s the only way I could feed a family … but the idea that national abandonment is the only way to earn a liivng … perpetuated at even the highest levels of government is just outright patent nonsense.
I think I should redouble my efforst to make more people, flilipno and fireginer alike aware that making a living in the Philippines is _not_ an impossible dream and that a ‘job’ is not the only way to make a living.
October 15th, 2008 at 5:54 am
What??? You are a professional student too? Hahaha. My brother here doesn’t believe in education. Don’t need it here daw in the PHilippines. Just be a wise businessman. He is right, in a lot of ways. Anyway, you are doing a good job. But don’t blame me for helping some over. Those we did help are doing good - they are sending money back to help their parents, actually, who are old already. One got married and sponsored her husband over. So no sad story there.
Btw, some cruiser friends of ours are interested to come over. One asked if there are any jobs to keep the cruising kitty going. Hope they read your website
October 15th, 2008 at 9:07 am
@Ellen: No sense going out into the real world when I just stay safe here in the university
Actually the point you made about a family member going to some enlightened country where they can earn permanent residency via their work and then sponsor family members is a major reason I have written several articles here and on Bob’s magazine.
Show how (likely because I don’t get to the point quick enough) it sort of turned into a my country is better thna your country kind of debate. But the simple fact is, some countries treat hired workers as perpetual second-class non-citizens and others allow law-abiding and hardworking folks to shall we say, “earn their way in.”
Years ago my own country was the leader in this game … people never stop to think how a nation that started from a few poor dirt farmers and blacksmiths and becmae the richest and most powerful naton on earth. It surely wasn’t by tightening the borders, but instead by accepting the rich gists of people other nations seemed happy to give up.
So my advice to Filipinos who want a better life and feel they should or must look for it overseas is, don’t go to a second class country that will threat you as a third-class person, and then send you home with nothing to show but the price of a wornout jeepney and a Magic Sing. Instead seek out the places … and they are out there … where you will be valued for your personal worth and skills and take advantage of opportunities.