Migrant Workers Ministry: Information, Experiences and Meditations on Filipino people in Diaspora




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Sojourners in Korea: Migration as a faith experience

Millions of Filipinos have had migrated in many countries all over the world. The concentration of which are in South East Asia, Northeast Asia, the Middle East, Western Europe and North America--United States and Canada.

Migration as a faith experience
        When migrant workers are asked why they have to leave their families--spouses, children, parents, brothers and sisters and become migrant workers they would normally answer that "There are no jobs in our country." If not they would say that they have to earn a bigger income for particular economic project or in order to support a big family at home.
 
       When migrant workers leave their home country they are actually spending a lot of money for their job placement. A migrant worker would spend more of less than 2,000.00 US dollars. For a Filipino who does not have the financial resources, this amount of money means a fortune. Financing for job placement is always an economic yoke for every migrant worker, because loan sharks are waiting to be tapped by loan seekers to finance job placement abroad. A migrant normaly would opt to a loan with high interests which considerably be classified as usurious.
 
       Leaving home for a job abroad is definitely a heart wrenching experience for both the one who leaves home and those who stay behind. While spouses who are left behind expects a better future and greater economic capacity, they are also prone to emotional and psychological problems. As a consequence of married couples separated due to job abroad, marriages are broken. Not only spouses suffer form psychological depression, but also children, who in their tender age had been left behind by either the father of mother for jobs abroad. Children are of migrant workers may develop depression for the lack of parental presence and imaging in their growth process.
 
     Migration is an experience of faith, not necessarily in the religious sense, but faith in the future that somehow a better economic life is experienced. There is enough basis for a better future for migrant workers because in their daily struggle to survive in the toughest work conditions abroad, they are assuming responsibility for that future to be realized.
 
 
      
 

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