MANILA, Philippines -- What do you do if you’re working illegally in South Korea and get pregnant?

GMA Network’s Sandra Aguinaldo followed two of these TNT (“tago nang tago,” or hide-and-hide) couples in this week’s “I-Witness” and found out: They have the baby, and then send the child back to the grandparents in the Philippines.

The couple’s stories are stuff for a Korean tearjerker telenovela [TV soap]. One of the couples had just had their son about a month earlier, and was shown preparing to send him to the Philippines. “I-Witness” followed the couple as they went about preparing for their son’s trip: talking to him, telling him to be good, describing the place he was going to (hot, very hot, and no need to be bundled up against the cold). The father buys a lotto ticket, hoping that if he won a large amount, he could use this as a security bond with the South Korean government so his son could stay. “I-Witness” followed them all the way to Seoul’s airport, up through the plane ride, and their landing in Manila for a sort of happy ending, with little Dave being turned over to his grandparents.

The other couple had been in South Korea for 16 years, and the father has never been back to the Philippines. Their youngest was born in South Korea, then sent back home. “I-Witness” didn’t give her age but she looked like she was maybe 9 or 10 years old. Her only contact with her parents has been through an Internet webcam.
According to the Philippine Embassy in Seoul, there are about 8,000 Filipinos working illegally in South Korea and there are two to three babies sent home each month, presumably from TNT parents. The TV documentary didn’t explain how the couples are able to access pre-natal care, and the delivery itself, but they’re apparently able to. But, the babies have to be sent home eventually because the parents’ own situation is so precarious. One of the TNT Filipinos explained that if they’re ever arrested, they’d be deported outright, not even allowed to go home and pack.

The babies are brought back to the Philippines by a viajera, one of the women who regularly go to South Korea to sell Filipino goods. Some of them return with one of the TNT babies, giving a different twist to the idea of viajera cargo.

Reproductive decisions

The first thing that came to my mind while watching the documentary was “reproductive decisions,” a term used by demographers. “Decision” makes it sound all so rational, but we know that reproduction involves sex, which has its many irrational moments. One would think that if you were illegal in a country, you’d be careful not to have a baby, but I’ve been in public health long enough to know that a crisis, even with grave risks for the future, can actually spark a baby boom. Many refugee agencies now routinely offer family planning advice and contraceptives in camps because they’ve observed baby booms in refugee centers following a natural disaster or civil war.

But even with family planning services in these camps, there will still be a rise in the number of births, suggesting some logic to these baby booms. In times of crisis, couples may actually be “pushed” to reproduce. Often, it might be spurred by the deaths of children from the natural disaster or civil strife as a way of making up for lost offspring.

It’s just as complicated with our overseas Filipinos. I’ve heard stories as well of baby booms among Filipinos in other countries besides South Korea. If I remember correctly, there are also forced repatriations of babies (and their Filipino mothers) from some of the Middle Eastern countries because these are born out of wedlock.

Pregnancies in those situations are very risky; Filipinas in Middle Eastern countries can be considered lucky because deportation is mild compared to other penalties sometimes meted out for extramarital or premarital sex.

Yet the babies come. The “I-Witness” documentary had a segment showing a Filipino priest delivering a homily, presumably to fellow Filipinos in Seoul. In the homily, the priest gently chided the congregation in Filipino, “We seem to have only baptisms and no marriages,” a reference to the illicit dalliances that produce the babies.

All these stories remind us that our overseas workers also have their needs for companionship and relationships, and that we have to deal with their sexuality, including outcomes like pregnancy. In many cases, there may have been no actual “reproductive decision”: the pregnancy just happens. In other cases, it might even have been planned as a way of strengthening a relationship in the midst of so much stress.

Whatever the reason, or non-reason, there is still another possible outcome that the “I-Witness” episode did not look into: abortion, which is legal in most Asian countries. Even legal Filipino workers in these countries face possible job termination if they get pregnant.

Fertile

The bottom line is that many of the countries that take in Filipino workers want our cheap labor, but also fear our fertility. We have one of the highest population growth rates in the world, and the host countries know this. The issue of a pregnancy is highlighted in places where most of our overseas workers are women, like Hong Kong and Singapore. Employers see pregnancy as lost time from the mothers’ work. And if the babies are allowed to stay, they’re seen as a liability, adding to the host government’s social services burden.

It’s not so much the issue of race here as class discrimination. An upper-income Filipino professional hired by a large multinational in Singapore or Hong Kong is unlikely to have a pregnancy clause in his or her contract and may instead be provided generous education benefits for the children.

What to do then for our blue-collar Filipino workers? The orientation for departing workers now includes information on HIV/AIDS. Perhaps they should include family planning options. But then you only get to those who are leaving legally. It will have to be the Filipino support groups in Seoul and other destinations to reach out to overseas Filipinos, legal or illegal, with a reproductive health package that includes family planning, prevention and treatment of sexually-transmitted infections and counseling in the broader context that puts our overseas workers at risk, including the need for companionship and the whole issue of parenting.

Let’s look, too, at the cultural component. Here in the Philippines, we’ve had several generations of rural women who go to the big cities to work, get pregnant and ship the babies back home to a lola” [grandmother], who cares for the children on the domestic helper’s money remittances for years. We may have created the norm for our overseas Filipinos, assuring them it’s all right to have the babies since God, lolo [grandfather] and lola will provide with the help of their remittances.