Manila conference pushes for migration as a family unit.

This article appeared in the 7 September issue of Sunday Examiner, the newspaper of the Diocese of Hong Kong, edited by Columban Father James Mulroney.

In the run up to the August 29 to 30 International Catholic Migration Commission Consultation on Migration Issues, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of The Philippines, Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, said that he hoped the meeting would bring pressure to bear on the president, Gloria Arroyo, to halt the willy-nilly promotion of overseas employment, as he claimed it is having a disastrous effect on the family and social structure of the nation.

The archbishop said that instead of playing the numbers game and pushing as many people as possible into overseas jobs, the government should be working hard for the improvement of migrant workers’ rights in their countries of destination. "Unfortunately, our government in The Philippines seems to be concerned only with economic remittances from our overseas workers," he stated candidly in his closing remarks at the Makati City San Carlos Seminary, Metro Manila, on August 30.

The president of the bishops’ conference also challenged Churches in countries that receive migrant workers not just to provide pastoral care, but to also petition for their right to migrate with their families. As long ago as 1891, Pope Leo XIII called any labour programme, that mandates family separation for extended periods of time, immoral, in his famed encyclical, Of New Things (Rerum Novarum).

In view of the radical change that mass migration of single workers has brought to family life and the damage to the social infrastructure that has been wrought by prolonged separation of families, Archbishop Lagdameo wants the governments of sending countries to push for the right for people to migrate as a family, not just a single person.

"The ethical problems are much grater than the economic problem," he remarked. He described the greatest concern for the Church as being "marital problems resulting from separation, the incidence of fake marriages, divorces and domestic violence, which cannot be made up simply by economic and developmental solutions." Social surveys in The Philippines indicate that more than half the marriages of migrant workers are effectively split.

"I hope that our Episcopal Commission on Migrants and Itinerant People will be able to craft some suggestions for our governments to legalise these matters in the future… That’s the reason why they are talking now about rights of the migrants, so they can migrate no longer as individuals, but as families. They will not be separated from each other," the president of the bishops’ conference told CBCP News on August 29.

Archbishop Lagdameo said that, undoubtedly, the money sent back from abroad by migrant workers was the only thing keeping his own nation’s mismanaged economy afloat, but accused his government of subordinating the human needs of families and the migrant workers themselves to the administration’s financial goals.

"The government is totally misguided, because the way it is pushing for employment abroad deals only with boosting the country’s economy," he commented. He said that the administration is ignoring the radical change in family structure, which is producing more and more single-parent families, female-headed families and children-headed families, often while they are at an extremely young age.

He said, "The negative impact is not being considered, because they are the only economic benefit the country has." He noted, "While the social impact of migration, economic-wise, is good because it supports about 15 million families (in The Philippines), there are also other areas of social impact, which may be related to morality, separation of the members of the family, husbands separated from the wife and vice versa, parents separated from their children and vice versa, which have a negative impact on the families."

The consultation also discussed concerns related to migration such as human trafficking, the need for protection of migrants and labour rights.

Archbishop Lagdameo issued a wake up call to parish priests and parish councils in both sending and receiving countries. He observed that often their only interest is in the money a migrant may be able to donate or a service they may be able to offer to the parish. He said their parishes involvement in the real issues of migration is essential, because "it is on this level that many of the pastoral and ethical concerns of migrants can be successfully addressed."

Participating bishops came from Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, the Union of Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Timor Leste, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as the host country, The Philippines.

The president of the International Catholic Migration Commission, John Klink; the general secretary, Johan Ketelers; head of policy, John Bingham; and communications head, Marc Allen, together with representatives of Philippine Migrants Rights Watch, were present on day two of the conference.

[Sunday Examiner]