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.
