It may not be politically correct to say this, but the
Philippines greatest export to the world may be human chattel. Although there
are plenty of highly educated Filipinos who immigrate to foreign countries and
build very successful careers for themselves, sadly the consensus around the
world about the Philippines and its people are that they are an impoverished
country whose populace migrate to other far more economically abundant places
to work as unskilled labor. Be it the US, Europe, Australia, or Asia no matter
how many Filipinos you may find working in hospitals, schools, or running their
own businesses there will be just as many or even more Filipinos working as maids,
nannies, janitors, farmhands, etc. etc. And because of this it has become easy for
many to treat these people as less than human. In places like Hong Kong,
stories abound about Filipinos being treated worse than the family dog by their
employers, and in proudly democratic countries like the US, Filipino maids are
often forced to be on-call 24/7 to their host family in the hopes that maybe
one day in the distant future they can get the most coveted thing of all, an
immigration visa.
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