Struggle for our rights as migrants and refugees, end imperialist exploitation and oppression!

SPEECH AT THE HAMBURG ASSEMBLY OF REFUGEES, 8 February 2014

Dear fellow migrants and refugees and friends in Caravan:

In behalf of our organization Umangat-Migrante in Rome, and the International Migrants

Alliance-Europe chapter, we express our warmest and heartfelt solidarity with your event today and
with the just struggle of refugees spearheaded by Caravan here in Germany.

I have been requested to share with you our solidarity and our experiences and standpoint on the
issue of forced migration, the issue of refugees in Europe, the situation of Filipino and other
migrants in Europe, and how we can resist the continuing imperialist-instigated wars mainly by the
West.

I will first share with you the situation in the Philippines and why many Filipinos are being forced
to migrate abroad.

Roots of forced migration in the Philippines

To be able to understand why almost three thousand Filipinos leave the Philippines everday to seek
work abroad, one has to understand that the Philippines suffers from landlessness, foreign
domination, a backward economic formation, underdevelopment, and a corrupt, bureaucratic and
elite political structure controlled by a handful of political clans.

By October 2011, an additional 1.35 million Filipinos have been forced to go abroad by sheer lack
of opportunities, decent jobs and wages, livelihood and social services in the country. The number
of jobless Filipinos has risen to unprecedented heights from 2001-2010 and continues to reach
record-high levels under the present Aquino government. Hundreds of thousands are
underemployed. At least one-fourth of the countrys labor force has gone abroad to find work. At
the end of 2010, 11.2 million Filipinos or 28 percent of the labor force was either unemployed or in
search for additional jobs. One in every four Filipino workers was either jobless or underemployed.

The Filipino people are being forced to migrate because of desperation. The economys lack of
development resulting in job loss, low wages and lack of livelihood at home is the primary push
factor.

Liberalization, deregulation and privatization are key words in the current economic policies of the
Philippine government that have brought further misery, unemployment and poverty for many
Filipinos.

For example, under the guise of liberalization and deregulation, the Philippine government has
allowed the unregulated importation of rice and other food items. When cheaper rice and other food
imports flooded the market, the local producers of rice and other food items could not anymore
compete, because imports have become cheaper, and besides, local small producers and farmers do
not receive adequate government support or subsidy for their produce. Also because of greed and
corruption, the Philippine government favors its cronies and their foreign counterparts who import
these food items. The obvious result: local rice and food items are not bought, thus, no income for
the farmers and producers. And no income for the farmers and producers means no more source of
livelihood. Thus, loss of jobs for many small farmers and producers.

As progressive migrant Filipinos, we believe that to genuinely address the problem of forced
migration, the government should decisively deviate from the past and present administrations
labor export policy and focus instead on developing the national economy by advancing local
industries, agriculture and basic services. We fully support the call and struggle for national
industrialization and genuine land reform as the ultimate solution to the problem of forced
migration and labor export program. Only through taking steps in building the domestic economy
and ensuring social welfare intervention can joblessness and forced migration be truly addressed.

War creates refugees

Wars, specifically imperialist-instigated wars, results in deaths, destruction, chaos, orphans and
refugees. Imperialists instigate wars in a futile attempt to resolve their crises that the very system of
capitalist greed, exploitation and oppression breeds. Imperialist wars destroy countries and its
people in order to plunder a country's resources. In the case of the Middle East, of Iraq and Libya,
the objectives is to appropriate the oil resources. The imperialist-formation that is the European
Union, do not have any moral justification to violate the rights of migrants and refugees presently in
the EU. In fact, the EU should be made to account for its crimes against humanity, against migrants,
against refugees, against European citizens who themselves are victimized by the few elite and
greedy ruling capitalist classes that have long-imposed their will on the exploited and oppresed
majority.

The situation of Filipinos in Italy: (134,154 Filipino migrants as of 2010, Wikipedia)

Filipinos (2.9%) form the fifth largest non-EU migrant community in Italy, after the Albanian
(10.6%), Marocco (9.9%), China (4.6%) and Ukraine (4.4%). Italy is also the largest European
migration destination for Filipinos. Lombardy (esp. Milan) is home to the largest Filipino
community. Roughly 108,000 Filipinos reside in Italy legally as temporary workers or permanent
residents, and estimates on the number of illegal Filipinos vary widely from 20,000 to 80,000.

ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica), Italys statistics office, said in its October 8 release that
there are 113,686 documented Filipinos living in Italy in 2008. This is compared to the 105,675
number ISTAT estimated in 2007.

This makes Filipinos the sixth largest foreign population group in Italy, behind Romania (796,477),
Albania (441,396), Morocco (403,592), China (170,265), and Ukraine (153,998).
Females outnumber males (66,080 versus 47,606), ISTAT data show. But among the 12 countries of
origin that have the most numbers of migrants in Italy, Filipinos have the biggest percentage (79.6%
or an estimated 90,267) of migrants living in capital cities, or capoluoghi.

Among the renowned capital cities are Milan and the Italian capital of Rome. Milan, considered
Italys financial capital, hosts 28,735 Filipinos according to ISTATs 2008 data, while Filipinos in
Rome number to 25,323. Other Italian cities with visible numbers of Filipinos are Bologna (4,068),
Firenze (3,668), and Torino (2,713).

The rest of the Filipinos in Italy (20.4 percent or an estimate of 23,419) live in the countrys altri
comuni or other communities.

Italy is the second-biggest destination country of Filipinos in Europe (behind the United Kingdom)
if one looks at the Philippine governments 2007 stock estimates of overseas Filipinos.

Covering both documented and irregular or undocumented migrants, data from the Commission on
Filipinos Overseas (CFO) showed that there are 82,594 temporary migrants, 24,598 permanent
migrants, and an estimated 13,000 undocumented migrants in Italy as of 2007.
CFO gets its estimates using data from host countries census and immigration registers (such as
ISTAT), data that CFO and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) produce.
Likewise, data is also culled from information on Filipinos who registered with the Philippine
embassies in consulates in particular the embassy in Rome and the consulate in Milan.

Italy has 20 regions, or comunes, and Lombardia region (where Milan belongs) has the biggest
Filipino concentration with 40,989 Filipinos. The region of Lazio, where Rome is situated, follows
next with 27,819.

Emilia-Romagna region, where the city of Bologna is located, has the third biggest regional
concentration of Filipinos with 10,593 (4,068 of whom live in Bologna alone). But in terms of
percentage share to a regions total migrant population, Filipinos in the Lazio region make up 6.2
percent a far second behind the Romanians with 35.2 percent. Romanians, by percentage share of
migrants in Italys different regions, have the biggest share of migrants in 15 of Italys 20 regions.

Italy is a known destination country for female domestic workers from the Philippines. POEA data
reveal that the 2,839 deployed to Italy last year as domestic workers is the sixth largest country
group of those deployed overseas as household service or domestic workers.

63% of Filipino Italians are women, and they mostly work as domestic workers. The Philippine
Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) says that Italy allowed 5,000 non-seasonal/regular
workers, up from 3,000 in 2007.

Meanwhile, caregivers who went to Italy in 2008 were the ninth biggest country group in terms of
deployed overseas caregivers.

A 2009 paper by Italian researcher Giuseppi Sciortino wrote that the Philippines, during the years
2007 and 2008, has the third biggest number of workers required by Italys migrant quota system
with 5,000. In both years, Italy asked for 8,000 workers from Egypt and 6,500 workers from
Moldova. The Philippines is among 14 countries that the Italian government sets quotas for number
of workers.

Just recently, the Italian government encouraged irregular or undocumented domestic workers and
caregivers to apply for amnesty. During the June to September 30 application period, the Italian
government said it has received 180,408 applications representing domestic workers and 114,336
for caregivers. No data by nationality are currently available. Migration analyst Filomeno Aguilar of
the Ateneo de Manila University told the OFW Journalism Consortium he sees this amnesty
measure benefiting Filipinos more than other nationals.

POEA data show that deployment of Filipino workers to Italy was up by 22.6 percent in 2008
(22,623 versus 17,855 in 2007, the latter figure the lowest deployment to Italy in the current
millennium).

Remittances data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas show that Italy is the fifth biggest source of
remittances in 2008 with US$678.539 million (behind the United States, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and
the United Kingdom).

In 2007, Filipinos in Italy sent the equivalent of US$500 million back to the Philippines, making it
the fourth largest source of remittances after the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Canada. The town of
Mabini, Batangas has extensively benefited from Italian Filipinos, the town having the most former
residents living abroad than any other Filipino town. And a part of Mabini town today that has
large homes built from remittance money is named "Little Italy." However, due to the economic
slump in 2008, remittance money from Italy grew at a much slower pace than usual.

Wikipedia 2010 reports that there are about 131,000 Filipinos in Italy. This makes the country host
to more Filipinos than any other countries in Europe except the United Kingdom and Spain.
There are approximately 60 Filipino organisations in Italy, most of which are church-based,
although there are several cultural and civic groups as well.

(NB: 50,000 without middle name and 70,000 with middle name. Concentrated in Rome and Milan.
Domestic workers migrating to the south of the country. Pinoys in Milan and Torino are mostly
industrial workers. Because of closure of many factories in the country, Pinoys forced to transfer to
other countries in Europe. Undocumented Pinoys don't have insurance and other benefits. Amnesty
might be an instrument to ride the country out of the financial crisis by taxing the undocumented
during the process of legalization. There are 47 Filipino religious organizations in Rome alone.)

Despite becoming well-entrenched in Italian society, the Filipino community in Italy has their own
share of issues and struggles, such as the often costly legalization process, state exactions from the
Philippine government, pension benefits and work-related matters.

Organizing Filipino migrants in Italy

(Please share your own concrete experiences here. How did you start to organize Pinoys in Italy?
What are their issues? What activities were launched to invite them and encouraged them to form an
organization? What were the results? What campaigns were undertaken? How do you maintain the
health of the organization?)

The predicament of refugees in Europe: the Lampedusa tragedy as a wake-up call

Many of you have by now been familiar with the recent tragedy that happened in Lampedusa. More
than 180 persons fleeing the strife and chaos in the African continent lost their lives when the boat
they were travelling on sank near the island of Lampedusa. Hundreds more have been missing and
have not been found. These people were clearly escaping the wars, destruction, economic
dislocation and violences from their own countries, and have wanted to seek refuge to Europe.
Lampedusa is a small island in Italy that has been advertised as a tourist destination, a vacation
paradise. It is more easily accessible coming from Africa, than from the European continent.

And because Lampedusa is the nearest outpost of the European Union, being an Italian territory,
it has become the practical destination of people fleeing the wars, strife, poverty and economic
dislocation from Africa. Many refugees from Africa risk travelling the rough seas to be able to reach
Lampedusa and enter Italy or the EU. Many have succeeded, but many many more have lost their
lives. To date, concerned groups have pegged the number of migrants and refugees who have lost
their lives attempting to enter fortress Europe at over13,000, and this number is still increasing by
the day.

Fortress Europe is essentially anti-migrant and anti-refugee, yet, their economic, political and social
policies contribute and cause chaos, strife, wars, economic dislocation, plunder, forced migration
and refugees in many countries, particularly the underdeveloped ones in Africa, the Middle East,
Asia and the former Soviet republics and satellite states.

The EU countries follow the so-called 2003 Dublin Regulation which states that any refugee who
reaches an EU country can only apply for asylum in the country he or she enters first. In the case of
refugees first reaching Lampedusa, an Italian territory, they could only apply asylum in that country.
This rule benefits Germany most of all because it is completely surrounded by EU countries.

The EU has put into place so-called measures to regulate the flow and entry and acceptance of
refugees, and has imposed measures and funded programs to prevent the entry of what it calls
unwanted migration or those it refers to as economic migrants, obviously loaded terms if we
see their definition from the point of view of the EU as a class formation of the few ruling elite who
own and control big business and capitalist enterprises in Europe that exploits and oppresses the
workers and people in the name of profit. It is easier to understand the language of the EU from this
perspective vis-a-vis their treatment of migrants and refugees. The EU accepts those migrants and
refugees it can abuse, exploit and oppress, and puts in place a quota. Thus, the EU Return Directive
seeks to spew specifically undocumented migrants and refugees it considers redundant to their
needs.

Thus, fellow migrants, refugees and comrades, in the face of this political, economic and social
context here in the EU, we should all the more persevere in our struggle. We are struggling for our
basic human rights, for our rights as migrants, for our civil, political, economic, social and cultural
rights. We are struggling for our rights as workers, as farmers, as individuals and members of a
collective community exploited and oppressed by big businesses, multinational corporations, and
corporate totalitarians who have succeeded in controlling the economy and politics in Europe and
imposed a virtual dictatorship over everyone including the European working classes and other
exploited economic and social sectors.

While we fight for our rights to be recognized as migrants and refugees in the legal and political
arenas, we must not forget the bigger struggle to fight imperialist exploitation and oppression which
is causing all the chaos, wars, poverty, economic dislocation and violence not only in the countries
where we come from, but also in the EU countries and other lands. We must build the strongest
solidarity between and among us migrants and refugees, and between us and other exploited and
oppressed peoples in Europe and elsewhere.

Thank you! Long live international solidarity!

Weng Flores
Umangat-MIGRANTE Rome
Rome, Italy
IMA Europe