DO WE NEED A DEPARTMENT OF MIGRATION?
Philippine Migrants Rights Watch
September 9, 2016
In his first State of the Nation Address, President Duterte
revisited one of the promises he made during the campaign period: the creation
of a department for OFWs that “shall focus on and quickly respond to their
[OFWs’] problems and concerns.” In his speech, he referred to leasing a
building dedicated to OFWs so that they don’t have to commute, get stuck in
traffic, and go to different government offices to put together all the needed
documents. He also urged the use of computers to speed up the process. About two weeks later, on 15 August 2016, the
first One-Stop-Service Center for OFWs was launched at the ground floor of the
Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA). Other such centers will
be established in the regional offices of the Department of Labor and
Employment (DOLE) and POEA.
The
Philippine Migrants Rights Watch (PMRW), a registered civil society network
established in 1995 to encourage the recognition, protection and fulfillment of
Filipino migrants’ rights, is heartened by President Duterte’s attention to the
concerns and interests of overseas Filipino workers. The revival of the
one-stop-shop in POEA is a welcome initiative that will ease the OFWs’ burden
in compiling all the certifications and documents required for overseas
employment. At the same time, PMRW has reservations about a proposed new
department to govern migration.
The
creation of a single department for OFWs dates back to 2010, when a bill was
filed for this purpose. Presently, there are five versions of the bill filed in
the Senate and the House of Representatives. Two versions call for the creation
of the Department of Migration and Development while the other three refer to
the envisaged agency as the Department for Overseas Filipino Workers. The
reasons for PMRW’s reservations on the proposed new department are the following.
1)
How
will the new department do better than the current system?
It
is not clear what specific gaps in migration governance the new department will
tackle as well as gaps which cannot be solved under the current system. The
proposed bills will not touch the core of the two agencies the migrants mostly
deal with (POEA and OWWA). They propose to combine some of the other minor
functions/institutions in the new department to reduce migrants’ time and
efforts in going from place to place, but this one-stop measure does not seem
to warrant a new department. Ultimately, the new department will simply take
away the leadership/responsibility of migration policy from the Department of
Labor and Employment and transfer it to a new entity. One cannot avoid the question:
is the new department addressing real concerns of migration governance or
simply creating new administrative positions?
2)
How
many laws will have to be revised?
The
international labor migration framework that has been established by the
Philippines is based on several laws, notably, the Labor Code of the
Philippines provisions on overseas employment, the Migrant Workers and Overseas
Filipinos Act (RA 8042), An Act Amending RA 8042 (RA 10022), POEA Rules and
Regulations Governing the Recruitment and Employment of Land-based OFWs (2016),
POEA Rules and Regulations Governing the
Overseas the Recruitment and Employment of Sea-based Workers (2016), the 2016
Overseas Workers Welfare Administration Act (RA10801) and others. All these and other normative instruments
required long and intensive discussions, debates, studies, consultations and
negotiations. How long will it take for the new Congress to amend all the
necessary provisions affected by the creation of the new department? Can the
legislative agenda of Congress be hijacked by the requirements of the new
institution?
3) Who
will be the leading department responsible for the protection of Filipino overseas?
Most
issues concerning the protection of Filipinos overseas occur while they are
abroad. Currently, the country-team approach established by the Ramos
administration confers to the ambassador, and therefore to the Department of
Foreign Affairs, the leadership in the protection of Filipinos overseas.
However, the bills assigned to the proposed department the task of establishing
and implementing the Philippines’ migration policy. This will create some
duality in the task of ensuring protection to Filipinos. In this respect, the
experience of other countries should not be ignored. In 2004, India established
a Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) to take care of all Indian
nationals based overseas. In early 2016, MOIA was merged with the Ministry of
External Affairs (MEA) mainly to eliminate a conflict of competencies with MEA,
which, through its embassies, was the one primarily responsible for overseas
Indians.
4)
What
is the main scope of the proposed department?
Currently,
the titles of different versions of the bill seem to imply a different goal
and/or target group: the Department of Migration and Development implies
linking migration to development whereas the Department of Overseas Filipino
Workers indicates a focus on OFWs. Upon closer examination of the bills, both
departments will actually focus on OFWs. However, some confusion and gaps remain.
It is not clear what is implied by development in some versions of the bill,
also because the linkage with development agencies, in particular with the
National Economic and Development Authority, is not articulated. While OFWs are
a major part of the overseas Filipino population, the Filipino diaspora is a
lot larger and more diverse. Who are covered in the scope of the proposed
department: Overseas Filipinos or Overseas Filipino Workers? Objectives and
functions of the proposed department will change considerably, depending on the
definition of the scope or population covered by the proposed department.
5)
If
the main issue is streamlining and coordination, what is the best solution?
Consultations
with government officials involved in the governance of migration, conducted
several times in the past, have usually emphasized that improvements need to be
enacted at the level of interagency coordination and communication.
Difficulties in such area could sometime be attributed to co-chairing functions
assigned by law to different departments. However, such difficulties can easily
be solved by amending particular sections in the existing laws. For the
migrants, the real benefit is having access to one physical place to where the
different institutions issuing the required documents are present. In that
regard, rather than a new department, which is a political/administrative
entity, what is needed is a physical place hosting the various
institutions. The one-stop-service
center responds to this need.
As
civil society organizations, we have been and will continue to be critical
participants in the governance of Philippine migration, trying to ensure that
the best interest of the migrants is pursued. We are aware that the Philippines
is considered a model of migration policy by other countries of origin in Asia,
and has received approval also at the international level, as testified by the
report of the Economic Intelligence Unit which was released in April 2016. This
does not mean that improvements cannot be pursued, particularly at the level of
implementation of the normative framework. At the same time, we are not
convinced yet that a new department of migration is needed or that it will
drastically solve current shortcomings. It is our impression that it might
generate further difficulties. It is also our conviction that the way forward
in the governance of migration, which currently involves a variety of migrants,
with different capabilities and resources, is not to increase bureaucracy and
to impose a one-size-fits-all approach, but to reduce and simplify the
bureaucracy. Less government is often better government. We call for a careful
study of the gaps in migration governance and for more public discussions and
consultations before rushing into the establishment of a single migration
agency.
CONTACT PERSON:
Carmelita
G. Nuqui
President,
PMRW
Tel: (63 2) 526-9098
Fax: (63 2) 526-9101
