Twenty countries will adopt Philippine initiatives to protect women and overseas Filipino workers, especially in crisis situations, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said. Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Some 11.5 million foreigners, among them Filipinos, are living in the United States without proper immigration documents, according to estimates released by the US Department of Homeland Security on Friday (Saturday in Manila). Read the rest of this entry »

MANILA, Philippines—Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Hong Kong on Friday urged Manila to make it its official policy to issue to OFWs their overseas employment certificates (OEC) without requiring from them proof that they had paid their Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa) membership fees. Read the rest of this entry »

MANILA, Philippines – As the European Union debt crisis deepens, a Filipino nonprofit group has expressed fears that Filipino workers in the euro zone will continue to stick it out there despite their precarious situation and as a result, could become victims of human traffickers, especially in Italy and Spain. Read the rest of this entry »

Majority of Filipino workers in Syria have rejected the Philippine government’s offer to repatriate them to the Philippines for free amid the worsening political security situation in the troubled Middle East state, citing scant employment opportunities back home, Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario admitted yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »

THE WORLD saw the Philippine foreign office take strong policy stances in 2011 on the protection of Filipinos put at risk in the Middle East and the protection of Philippine sovereignty in parts of the Spratly island group that clearly belong to Palawan province.

The Spratlys are in the West Philippine Sea (also called the South China Sea).

The unprecedented strong stance taken by the Department of Foreign Affairs in both issues is being seen by some observers as a result of the arrival in February of DFA Secretary Albert del Rosario. Read the rest of this entry »

MANILA, Philippines – The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) admitted yesterday that some of its officers failed to remit millions of pesos collected from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Read the rest of this entry »

Tomas D. Achacoso was administrator of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration from 1987 to 1990 under then-President Corazon C. Aquino, when Filipino migrant workers were still called overseas contract workers (OCWs). Read the rest of this entry »

Millions of Filipinos have left the country to find better-paying jobs abroad.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines would be a boiling cauldron of poverty and social unrest if it were not for the millions of Filipinos heading overseas to work in higher-paying jobs, according to a US embassy cable published by WikiLeaks. Read the rest of this entry »

The Philippines has taken advantage of opportunities offered by overseas migration probably more than have other developing countries. Thanks to its wide bench of human capital formed by prior decades of investment in education which, in turn, had been spurred by the importance Filipino families generally give to schooling. Unfortunately, however, migration has been dictated by necessity — not by choice — owing to past policy failures on both the demand side (labor-absorbing economic growth) and supply side (population growth) of the labor market in the economy. What should have been only a temporary reliance on overseas labor markets appears to have become a regular main feature of the economy. Read the rest of this entry »