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Visas of last resort
DID 52-YEAR-OLD widow and mother of two Suzanne Kapistrano “wait for a knight, so she’d get a visa to stay in Israel”? She did, insisted a faceless Interior Ministry official, Haaretz daily reported. Published in Hebrew and English, the 82-year-old newspaper is read by the country’s governors. “Too many Filipinas are going this road. It must stop,” reporter Dana Weiler-Polak quotes from the internal memo. “They must be removed from the country.” The document reflects “a trend of trying to prevent marriages between Israelis and Filipinas,” the Haaretz report added. Kapistrano was a caregiver, one of roughly 36,880 Filipino workers in Israel. (The United Arab Emirates has 529,114 OFWs, and Saudi Arabia, 1.02 million.) When Kapistrano’s employer died, she stayed put. She “met and fell in love” with Israeli Shlomo Tzagir, 67. They started the five-year process to obtain citizenship for Kapistrano. Officials recommended approval. But the lady who issued visas said no, without even meeting the couple. “He has someone to take care of him,” she wrote. “She has a way of staying in Israel legally.” Reminds one of the Jewish matchmaker Yenta. In the Broadway play, “Fiddler on the Roof,” Yenta sings: “Hodel, Hodel, I’ve made a match for you. / He’s handsome. He’s young./ All right, he’s 62./ But he’s a good match, a good catch/. True? True.” Even internal documents “do not justify remarks of this type,” a ministry spokesman admitted. Tel Aviv district court vice president Esther Covo, meanwhile, ordered the release of Kapistrano, pending a decision. “Ministry employees do encounter this phenomenon,” the spokesman said. “Phenomenon” refers to marriages of convenience. Some Indians and Koreans marry Filipinas to wangle business permits here. More Filipinas are marrying Taiwanese, Japanese and Koreans. Wedding rings are often visas of last resort. They are “escape hatches from grinding penury,” Viewpoint noted on Jan. 8, 2008. Some admit that marrying foreigners is a ticket for possible jobs and settlement abroad, the Overseas Foreign Workers Journalism Consortium noted. A total of 309,745 Filipinos married foreigners within an 18-year span. Nine out of 10 (92 percent) were brides. An Asian marriage migration trend is surging, concludes an earlier Commission on Filipinos Overseas study by Minda Valencia, Myrna Ramos and demographer Nimfa Ogena. “Migration not infrequently gets a bad press,” UN Development Programme’s Helen Clark writes. “Negative stereotypes abound.” They range from migrants “stealing jobs” to seeking marriage as visas of last resort. That’s only part of the picture. Thus, this year’s United Nations Human Development Report “challenges stereotyping,” as the Israel visa officer did. “Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development” reveals that people on the move “reflect a more complex and highly variable reality.” HDR seeks “to rebalance perceptions that most migrate to faraway places with strange sounding names.” The number of nation states, after all, has quadrupled to almost 200. “There are more borders to cross.” In fact, only a third of migrants (70 million) hoof it from poor to affluent nations. Majority of the 200 million migrants move within countries, often from faltering farms or over-fished coastal villages to ill prepared cities. Migration reporting remains fixated on remittances. These funds fill food pantries, pay school bills, etc. Women migrants send a larger proportion of their incomes homes than men. “People from the poorest places gain the most.” “Even if well managed, international migration does not amount to a national development strategy,” the report says. migration won’t shape the development prospects of an entire nation. “Migration does complement national efforts to reduce poverty and improve human development. These efforts remain as critical as ever.” That is a point candidates in the 2010 elections here should note. “When migrants skills complement those of local people, both groups benefit: from rising levels of technical innovation to enriched culture. But policy response—both from labor-sending to labor-receiving countries—is wanting.” “Some governments institute repressive entry regimes,” the Haaretz report notes. Many fail to protect workers. Asian migrants moving to the Gulf states often pay 20 to 25 percent of what they expect to earn over two or three years in recruitment and other fees. Corruption imposes additional costs. Private recruiters have to be closely regulated to curb fraud. It takes political courage to institute migration reforms. There are limits to governments’ ability while recession permits. Still, New Zealand instituted a seasonal employers’ scheme. Sweden introduced major labor migration reforms. But statesmanship never came cheap. Indonesia patterned its national agency for protection of migrant workers after the Philippines Overseas Employment Administration. “Other countries … tried to rationalize ‘paper walls’ to reduce barriers in legal migration. Few succeeded… Bribes remain common for securing passports, etc.” Population growth and poverty undercut chances for pressure to migrate to ease soon. The social costs can be extortionate. Of 10,242 Filipinas married to Japanese, 3,931 ended up as divorcees. “Your loved ones across that ocean/ Will sit at breakfast and try not to gaze/ Where you would sit at table/ Meals now divided by five/ Instead of six, don’t feed an emptiness,” Filipina poet Nadine Sarreal wrote. Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com |
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