Kung overseas workers ang ating mga magulang... If our parents are overseas workers...
Kung tayo ay dumaranas ng human trafficking... If we experience human trafficking...
Kung may pagsasamantala sa kababaihan... If there is exploitation of women...
Kung hindi makapagtrabaho ang college graduates... If college graduates cannot find work...
Kung naaabuso ang mga kabataang manggagawa... If youth workers are abused...
Kung papet ang ating pamahalaan... If we have a puppet government...
... HINDI TUNAY ANG KALAYAAN.
... OUR INDEPENDENCE IS NOT GENUINE.
Progressive Filipino Americans Demand Genuine Independence Towards Genuine Change
DAMAYAN Migrant Workers Association, Ugnayan ng mga Anak ng Bayan and our allies join the celebration and commemoration of the Filipino people’s continuing struggle for genuine national independence. We pay tribute to Filipino heroines and heroes who fought and perished !for the liberation of the motherland. We stand in unity with our compatriots in the homeland and overseas, particularly the migrant workers who despite great difficulties continue to work and be part of the economic and social change in the Philippines, here in the US and the 196 different countries where Overseas Filipino Workers are stationed.
Until today, the Philippine government continues to claim fake independence. But the Filipino masses know that our country is without real economic, political and national independence. Over seventy percent of our people, the vast majority are workers and farmers are in deep poverty, surviving on $2.39 or less per day.
Unemployment is at 10.9 percent; underemployment at 18.8 percent pushing the educated and professional middle class to leave our country to ensure the education and survival of their children. But under the policies, conditionalities and dictates of the global neoliberalization, the Philippines will never be able to create and provide jobs for its workforce. With out a nationalist industrialization and modern agriculture, the Philippine society will continue to be in constant crisis, only able to export !its most valuable resource—its workers— forcing the migration of more than 1.6 million Filipinos per year.!It will continue to place its economic survival on the backs of overseas im/migrant workers. Half the remittances holding up the Philippine economy come from the US. These remittances come mostly from women, separated from their families yet supporting them from afar.
The sacrifices and struggles of Filipino overseas migrant workers—the abuse, exploitation, isolation, and discrimination at the hands of America’s rich—must not disappear amidst the confetti and pageantry of this day. Neither should the legacy of foreign domination and semi colonization. That legacy has always led to the direct benefit of rich and powerful countries like the US and left an economic, political, military and cultural subservience in the Philippines. Foreign domination continues to crush the people’s aspirations for democracy and liberation in the Philippines.
Here in the US, at least 1 million undocumented Filipinos are invisible and live in the shadows of US society as domestic workers, hotel and restaurant workers, and other low-wage service workers. While some Filipinos have achieved relative economic security as medical professionals and business people, an increasing number of Filipino low wage workers continue to experience human trafficking, severe exploitation, and discrimination.The vast majority are college educated and professionals back home but are forced to do low-wage and devalued work to survive in the US while supporting families in the homeland. The Filipino youth face mounting tuition fees and lack of employment options, and Filipino women workers face additional gender harassment and violence at the workplace and in the community.
Overseas workers struggling for rights, dignity and justice are part of our legacy of struggle for national independence.!Filipino women, youth, students, immigrants and workers are joining large movements across the US, organizing and rising up. Last week, immigrant rights groups successfully defeated the anti-immigrant Secure Communities Program in New York, which would have increased deportations in our community. Damayan and Ugnayan will continue to educate, organize and mobilize our community to build the im/migrant workers rights movement and fight for the rights, dignity and justice of Filipino workers and youth until true independence and fundamental change become a reality.
