Flown back and forgotten: Filipino migrants face tough homecoming

Lucy Ortega thought her nightmare as an enslaved domestic worker in Syria was finally over when she boarded a government repatriation flight back to the Philippines four years ago. Instead, she faced a new set of problems.

Ortega was trafficked into servitude for eight years in Syria, then stranded for two years with other maids in a shelter in the Philippine Embassy when she sought help - an episode that caused outrage in the Philippines and made global headlines.

But since arriving home, she has received no government compensation for the embassy ordeal, trauma counselling or help finding work. Now 43 and with three young children, job offers are increasingly scarce, she said.

"I was enticed to work abroad because there were no good jobs in the Philippines. But since coming back, it's become harder for me to find work," Ortega told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in her small wooden home in a shantytown in the capital, Manila.

The Philippines is among the world's top sources of migrant labour and Filipino workers overseas sent back an estimated $40 billion in remittances to their families last year, accounting for about 10% of gross domestic product (GDP).

The government covers emergency repatriation costs for workers caught up in wars, political crises or exploitation abroad.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, 2.24 million Filipinos were flown home free of charge, and dozens of Filipino women and their children have recently been repatriated temporarily from Gaza and Israel due to the war between Israel and Hamas.

'WEAKEST LINK'

But with the number of Filipinos who received overseas employment certificates at a record high of about 2.5 million in 2023, migrant rights advocates are sounding the alarm about the problems faced by many returnees on arriving home - from unemployment to homelessness.

"The latest government figures mean we are sending 6,800 Filipinos per day (abroad). More and more Filipinos can be at risk, especially in conflict areas, if we fail to properly monitor all of them," said Arman Hernando, chairperson of migrant rights group Migrante Philippines.

"Are we deploying more Filipinos than we can protect?" he asked.

Some say more must be done to support them by the country's Department of Migrant Workers (DMW), a government agency established two years ago to facilitate overseas employment and reintegration services for returning Filipinos.

Reintegration is "the weakest link" in the country's migration policies, according to a 2023 study by a group of university researchers on economic migrants.

Seeking to address such concerns, the DMW launched a command centre in 2022 to provide rapid repatriation and welfare assistance to distressed migrant workers.

The problem, said Hernando, is that the agency only offers emergency assistance and not a comprehensive reintegration plan, which should include jobs, housing aid as well as legal advice and mental health care services.

Such an approach would also encourage the country's migrant labour force to come home, helping to build national industry and sustain the economy's long-term growth, economic analysts say.

The DMW and the Department of Foreign Affairs, the two agencies in charge of repatriation, did not respond to requests for comments.

NO JOB, NO HOME

Filipinos repatriated from Syria and recent returnees from Gaza said the government had paid for their flights and provided an emergency cash assistance of between 10,000 and 50,000 Philippine pesos ($178-$889).

Some of them were encouraged to use the money to start a small business.

But after spending sometimes years abroad, many migrant workers lack the social network required to launch a successful enterprise, said Hernando.