OFWs in the crossfire
Pinoys urged to leave amid ‘Israel vs Iran’ escalation,” Inquirer banner story, June 22, 2025. The blurb: “The government is encouraging Filipinos living and working in Israel and Iran to return to the country due to the escalating conflict between the two warring Middle Eastern states. But out of around 30,000 in Israel and fewer than 1,200 in Iran, fewer than 200 from both countries plan voluntary repatriation while all nine Filipino diplomats in Tehran are staying put.”
Inquirer banner story, June 24, 2025: “Gov’t to bring home OFWs amid Middle East tension.” Blurb: “President Marcos orders immediate repatriation of Filipinos in Israel and Iran, as the first batch of 26 scheduled to cross into Jordan. Philippine Embassy in Tel Aviv has so far received 253 repatriation requests.”
Pope Leo XIV on June 22: “Today, more than ever, humanity cries out and pleads for peace. [The cries] must not be drowned out by the roar of weapons or by rhetoric that incites conflict … War does not solve problems—on the contrary, it amplifies them and inflicts deep wounds on the history of nations that take generations to heal … Let diplomacy silence the weapons; let nations shape their futures through works of peace, not through violence and bloody conflict.”
As always, whenever and wherever war unfolds in whatever corner of the globe, overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) find themselves in the crossfire of warring nations, tribes, and political factions. On land and sea, in deserts and cities, in hostile and holy places, they toil to earn so that their loved ones back home would have more than they ever had in material things in the past, for their families to live not necessarily in plenty but in some comfort and dignity.
That not a few OFWs come home to find that their sweat and tears shed in distant lands have been all for naught is another story. Development groups and government agencies try to do their part in order to have good results or make things right, but some family situations are just too complicated. Absence can make hearts and savings go asunder.
OFWs have reasons to feel entitled. They have been hailed as modern-day heroes and even as unwitting evangelizers in secular societies with decreasing Christian believers whose faith is in the doldrums. OFWs’ earnings are a boost to their home countries’ economy and literacy levels (better education for their children). Alas, their absence also exacts a toll on their children. As the saying goes, you win some, you lose some. The biggest loss is to be flown home in a box, like a woman whose name was Luzviminda.
I could compile into a small volume the feature articles and column pieces I have written on OFWs, among them when the Inquirer chose them as Filipinos of the Year; the death of a Kuwaiti princess in the hands of a battered Filipino domestic helper which happened in Cairo; a dead Filipino DH kept in the freezer for months; one happily working in a royal household; another crossing the desert to escape falling bombs and making it home. Oh yes, the families the OFWs left behind (focus on husbands) and how they cope are stories not to be ignored, I found out.
During Holy Week, I’d be inspired to compose for this column space an OFW’s Stations of the Cross or meditations on one or two of Jesus’ seven famous last words on the cross or the siete palabras. My feeble attempts to walk in their steps.
I remember Operation Desert Storm under Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf in the early 1990s when a coalition of forces led by the US initiated aerial bombings of Iraq and ended with the liberation of Kuwait. It is a wealthy country, but, alas, some of the most glaring inhumane treatments of OFWs happened in Kuwait. As in, Kuwait again?
With instant messaging via the internet in the adept hands of OFWs and their families, we have seen recent videos of how OFWs in Tel Aviv were living with air raid sirens and scampering for shelter in bunkers, to emerge later and find their quarters falling apart from a bomb that hit their building. One was carrying her newborn child.
In his 2020 encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis did warn that “conditions that favor the outbreak of wars are once again increasing.”
Again, from Pope Leo XIV: “I pledge my closeness and prayers for all the victims, especially children and families, to stop the war and to support every initiative for dialogue and peace.”
“Every initiative” that comes from a genuine desire for peace with no strings attached.
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