|
Was the survey kidding? The survey that said 95.5 per
cent of young Filipinos want out and the overseas destination
does not matter much. It could be Gori, the birthplace of Uncle Joe,
which the Russian Army seized during a Georgia blitz. Or some
God-forsaken place in the desert.
The message of the young
Filipinos surveyed was “ any place would do, just get us out of
here.”
What I found incredible was the
figure. It cannot be a meager 95.5 percent. The true figure is
that anywhere from 98 to 99 percent of young Filipinos want to move
out. Only the sons and daughters of the rich and the powerful, who
do not make up one percent of the young, want to remain here. They
will not trade their ruling class status in their wretched country
even for a good life overseas.
A friend from Zamboanga City sent
me this depressingly credible SMS: The fondest dream of the young
MILF fighters, believe it or not, is to get a US visa. A Canadian
visa would do. The truth is they are fighting because they have
nothing better to do.
There are only two ways of
reacting to the burning and overwhelming desire of the young to find
immigration havens.
One is to make them competitive
in a global work place, or enhancing their skills that would make
them productive immigrants. And be world-class workers.
Second is to rein in their
wanderlust by providing domestic jobs that are both well-paying and
generating psychic incomes.
For those who would not stay put,
let us apply number one. For those who have second thoughts about
migrating but have no other option because of the dearth of
opportunities to advance here, let us apply the second.
Both responses can be pursued at
the same time. It cannot be an either or response.
Training the young to get GMAT
scores of 700 and up and funding their MBAs at the top tier business
schools (at HBS, Wharton, Tuck, Kellog, Haas and the rest,
which is exactly the Indian model) is the ideal pathway to
super productive immigration but this is better said than done.
Even at the second-tier but still
very good business schools, the combined cost of tuition and board
and lodging is still out of the reach of ordinary Filipino families.
So, forget about this.
The cheapest, quickest way to
place the young in good-paying jobs overseas is to train them in two
areas—information technology and the allied medical profession.
Top-level certifications from Cisco and Microsoft are enough to
attract North American recruiters and the firms from Singapore.
The best way to attract Japanese
technology firms is for the young Filipino IT worker to pass
the PHILNITS exam, plus a Level 2 Japanese Language Proficiency Test
or JLPT. With these two, you will have Japanese companies more
than willing to give you technical jobs in Japan. There is no need
to elaborate the requirements to get accepted as a nurse or physical
therapist in North America.
On the skilled worker category,
nothing can beat the pay given to oil rig workers and merchant
marine officers. They command salaries comparable to the entry-level
pay of attorneys at big US law firms.
If there is a common denominator
to these work categories, it is the fact that the training can
be done here, unlike the costly pursuit of an MBA degree from a
top-tier foreign university. And young Filipinos have the brain
power and the inclination to excel in these fields. And setting up
the training infrastructure toward excelling in these areas is not
costly.
Solution number two is harder to
put in place. Graduates of applied physics and molecular biology are
often found in call center jobs because of the dearth of good jobs
for the country’s best and the brightest.
The conservative estimate is it
would take half a generation to build the economic infrastructure
that would provide good jobs to those with the talent and the
skills, in an environment characterized by meritocracy.
There are other quick pathways to
success: entertainment and sports. But how many gets the chance to
get noticed on You Tube like in the case of singer Darnel
Pineda? Or wield the cue with the dexterity of Bata Reyes?
The Olympic Games give
world-class athletes the opportunity to showcase their talents, a
sure pathway to fame, then riches.
But as our Olympic Games
performance pathetically underscored, we do not have the
genetics, the fire and the spirit to achieve instantaneous
success via this route.
mvrong@yahoo.com
|
