Stories on OFWs from the University of San Francisco

Shadowy Trails: Stories of the Undocumented
by Cher Jimenez

SAN FRANCISCO — His voice reverberates in a downtown San Francisco train station as
passersby, residents and visitors make their way to the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART),
the city’s main subway system.
Train-goers from all over the world hear exceptional music as Ruben Kalinga sings
Tagalog songs from way back. Many Filipino commuters and foreign travelers drop coins
and sometimes one-dollar bills into the neongreen plastic box Kalinga has kept for months,
ever since he decided to pursue a long-time dream.
With a guitar and a harmonica, Kalinga sings rock ‘n’roll and occasionally sits down to
croon country and folk songs to the delight of his Western audience.
The 50-year-old former merchant seaman is no stranger at BART stations.
Every day, he lugs his musical instruments and performs for hours, most of the
time without food, unless he decides to take a short break.
But unlike other Filipinos who are illegally staying in the United States, Kalinga is
not in hiding. In fact, despite his illegal status, he exposes himself by performing almost
daily in parts of San Francisco where police, tourists, and locals pass by. He also insists that
his real name be mentioned in this story.
“They know who are illegal here, but I’m not afraid. I know they won’t deport me. You
can’t call me TNT (for the Tagalog tago nang tago or “always in hiding”) because I’m not
hiding,” he says with confidence.
Kalinga can afford to be nonchalant.
San Francisco is one of few US cities that have remained friendly to undocumented
immigrants like him.


So This is Home for Soma’s Pinoys
by Christian Esguerra
SAN FRANCISCO—The cramped space they call home in a five-story apartment building on Mission Street is a seeming affront to Jose “Joe” Ferrer and his roommate, Mang Aurelio Domingo.
Those who know them—at least who they used to be back in the Philippines—
know they deserve something better. Not a place like Unit 225, which they share with yet
a third occupant, a fellow Filipino surviving on financial aid from the United States
government.
Ferrer, 51, and Domingo, 65, are former professors in reputable universities in Manila,
with the older of the two having authored a college textbook. But here, they are ordinary
joes—Ferrer is a teaching assistant cum department store clerk, Domingo a security
guard—trapped in their own humble space.
Their shared apartment is more of a bodega, a pile of used clothes, seldom-used
appliances, balikbayan boxes, and an overall accumulation of American junk. There’s
very little room left for decent sleep on their old double-decker. Not to mention the gas
pipe hanging under the ceiling, a makeshift clothesline.
The rest of the Mint Mall and Hall, also known as Apartment 957, gives the general
feeling of despair—its reeking garbage depot, smelly carpeted corridors, vandalized elevator,
to name a few—for many of its roughly 500 occupants, mostly Filipinos.

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Study Says High School Drop-outs Not Children of OFWs

By Luis Carlo S. Liberato


MANILA–DISTANCE not only makes the heart grow fonder; it has also kept most children of women overseas Filipino workers from dropping out of school.Thus cites economist Alvin Ang of the University of Santo Tomas in his recently released study titled “Determining the Social Costs of
Overseas Filipino Workers’ Remittances: A Check through Education Indicators”.

Amid the tide of a nationwide rise of drop-outs and the slump of kids’ school participation and cohort survival, Ang rides against the commonly-held belief that distant parenting strategy doesn’t work.He asserts a contrarian belief that this strategy keeps OFW children in high school.

The results for children of OFWs are even more encouraging, says Ang of the UST Social Research Center, if women are the ones abroad.Women’s migration pushes children to stay in school, Ang told the OFW Journalism Consortium.Using mathematical formulas in Economics called “regressions,” Ang’s study showed that international migration positively affects education indicators such as drop-outs, school participation, and cohort survival.

The effect is also regardless of gender, his computations revealed. Drop out rates lessen in number, while school participation and cohort survival rates rise. It’s just that in all three indicators, women get more positive results, Ang said.

Ang admitted getting surprised with the results, knowing first-hand the social costs associated with parental absence: he was away from his family for a long time in Japan on a study grant.Contrast also Ang’s findings with data from the Department of Education: secondary education drop-out rates nationwide rose as of school year 2005-2006.Drop-out rates for both elementary and secondary levels, according to the government education agency, went up by above seven percent and nearly 13% in school year 2005-2006, from 6.98% and 7.99%, respectively, in school year 2004-2005.

High cost of education coupled by lingering poverty has been cited by pundits as reasons for these increases.Ang’s study cited the reasons for those who didn’t drop out.

In Ang’s study, which was presented at the Sixth National Social Science Congress last May, overseas migration of parents increases cohort survival rates and school participation rates.His data on cohort survival and school participation looked at children belonging to the 10-14 and 15-19 years-old age groups, across Philippine regions, as well as the number of male and female OFWs coming from the annual Survey on Overseas Filipinos. As for drop out rates, the age bracket of his data covers 13 to 16 years old.He chose these age brackets because a recent paper by another economist, Rosemarie Edillon of the Asia-Pacific Policy Center, wrote that high school children of OFWs “are worst off in terms of time and money.

”This was where Ang hurled what he called “interesting conjectures.”
“The absence of the female migrant is a strong incentive to remain in school…[indicating] that OFW children are studying hard despite the absence of mothers (and) thereby dispelling that they are worst off.”He added that “absent mothers increase the chance of children completing (high school).
”But if the mother is here in the Philippines, all the more that “children want her attention,” says Ang.He posited that children adjust to a situation of parental absence while children with no OFW parents prefer the “traditional family set-up” where both parents are present.

Still, money is part of the story: Ang’s data were on the number of OFWs, not on remittances.While his study doesn’t mean discouraging results for male OFWs who also bankroll children’s education, Ang noted women OFWs make the difference. “The absence of mothers is already the worst case scenario for a (Filipino) family tradition where the father is the breadwinner, so children really must study hard.”Of course, he says “it is but proper (for the children) to study hard, returning the sacrifice and finishing (school) on time.”
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