Page 12 - LM Confidential Issue August 2014

Filipino
Remittances: $25B from Canada
Remittances from immigrants and migrant workers in Canada to family or for investments back home is a booming business
Scenes in the City
World
Julia Montes
credits “Ikaw
Lamang” for
becoming a
Better Actress
Julia Montes is very thankful to ABS- CBN’s master teleserye “Ikaw Lamang”
for honing her to become a better actress through the character she portrayed, Mona.
“Before ‘Ikaw Lamang’ started, I was so nervous because I didn’t know if I can act side by side with the big stars who are part of the cast. But eventually, I became at ease because they were always generous and were ready to help me give justice to my role,” said Julia.
Meanwhile, tension between Samuel (Coco Martin) and Franco ( Jake Cuenca) will surely heat up in “Ikaw Lamang” now that Mona is gone. How far will Samuel
go to get the justice that his wife deserves? Will he continue to wage war against Franco and Maximo (Ronaldo Valdez) now that the lives of his loved ones are at risk? How will Mona’s death change the lives of Samuel, Franco, and Isabelle (Kim Chiu)?
“Ikaw Lamang” is the master teleserye of ABS-CBN which is under the production of Dreamscape Entertainment Television.
Don’t miss the heart-pounding scenes
in the timeless master teleserye, “Ikaw Lamang” weeknights after “Hawak Kamay” on ABS-CBN Primetime Bida. For more information about “Ikaw Lamang” visit
the show’s official social media accounts Facebook.com/IkawLamang.Online, Twitter.com/IkawLamang_TV and Instagram.com/IkawLamang_TV.
Vhong, Billy, KC, and Richard remain as Kapamilya
Another blessing has come comedian-host Vhong Navarro’s way as he renewed his contract with ABS- CBN.
Vhong thanked the Kapamilya network and the ‘madlang people’ for giving him courage and support to continue bringing fun to TV viewers.
“The love that I receive from the Kapamilya is unconditional. They don’t forget me despite all the challenges I’m facing. They make me feel more loved,” Vhong stated.
Vhong’s fellow mainstay in noontime show “It’s Showtime” Billy Crawford also inked a new contract with ABS-CBN. Billy will return to Sunday variety show “ASAP” and will host a new reality show soon.
Actress-host KC Concepcion, meanwhile, also renewed a two-year contract with ABS-CBN last Friday and announced that she will soon return to acting on television alongside Coco Martin and Kim Chiu via the master teleserye “Ikaw Lamang.”
“I’m so humbled and thankful that I’m part of the cast of ‘Ikaw Lamang: The New Book,’” she revealed.
“Be Careful With My Heart” star Richard Yap also signed another one-year contract with the network on the same day KC signed hers.
Every day, thousands of immigrants and migrant workers in Metro Vancouver head to the nearest money transfer outlet to send money home — often to needy family members, sometimes to invest.
These outlets, more often called remittance centres, are on almost every commercial street in Metro — in grocery stores, hair salons, florists, post-office outlets, Safeways, Walmarts and even sports bars.
Some are neat and tidy, some are run down. These remittance centres are the unassuming face of a globalized money transfer industry that has tripled in value in a decade — to $529 billion a year, according to the World Bank.
A recent Simon Fraser University study found more than 300 MoneyMart and Western Union remittance outlets in Metro Vancouver alone. That
doesn’t include the many independent remittance centres, operating in dozens of languages.
The amount of money that leaves Canada in remittances is staggering. At $24 billion a year in 2012, according to the World Bank, the sum is equivalent to the annual budgets of 12 Universities of British Columbia. Or enough to buy 70 of Vancouver’s tallest building, the Shangri-La tower.
A Pew Research Center survey reveals immigrants to Canada, and especially temporary foreign workers, send more dollars per capita in remittances out of Canada than immigrants and migrant workers in almost any other nation, including the U.S., Germany and Britain.
The top countries receiving Canadian remittances are middle-income nations — China (which receives $3.9 billion), India ($3.5 billion) and the Philippines
($2 billion). Remittances also often
go to poor countries. And sometimes to wealthy ones, to support family or invest in the country of origin.
After China,
India and the Philippines, the countries receiving the most Canadian remittances are Britain, France, Lebanon, Vietnam, Germany, Italy and South Korea.
Effects of globalization
Researchers are increasingly assessing the pros and cons of the giant remittance industry — as globalization causes the volume of migrants to rapidly expand.
The United Nations says there are 230 million migrants, people living in countries in which they were not born.
Canada has more than seven million immigrants, who make up 21 per cent of the population (compared to 14 per cent in the U.S.). In Metro Vancouver, 45 per cent of residents are foreign born.
Many who send home remittances
are “circular migrants” who move back and forth between their high-income host country and generally low-income homeland. The World Bank says these temporary foreign workers (whose numbers have tripled in Canada, to more than 400,000, under the Conservative government) are responsible for two- thirds of all remittances.
Some see positives in the worldwide distribution of private money from well-off to developing countries. They maintain it creates a phenomenon opposite to the “brain drain,” which draws talented migrants from developing nations to richer ones.
But researchers also question aspects of the remittance tide. They include often-exorbitant transfer commissions; break up of communities and families; the over-reliance of poor and corrupt countries on relatives abroad, and the unfair pressure many feel to transfer money back home.
Helping family abroad
For Vancouver’s Fatima Lagas, 43, however, remittances are fairly straightfoward.
The 43-year-old nurse sends about $400 each month to her brother and sister in the Philippines for food, health care, education and electrical bills. Interviewed at Metro Remittance Centre on Fraser Street, Fatima and her husband Henry, who works in a group home, say they’ve been doing so for 15 years.
Maricris Tanay, 45, is sending money home to build a house for her future.
Tanay works as a live-in caregiver in Vancouver and in a Gastown bar on weekend nights. She transfers $1,000 a month out of Canada. “It’s so stressful and lonely here. All it is, is work, work, work. I don’t want to stay here. When I’m old, I’m going back to the Philippines.”
Abuse
Since the migration of one person
to another country is often a family decision, many migrants feel guilty and pressured to send money to people, some of whom they fear may misuse it.
Most migrants remit in the belief
the money will go to food, housing, health care and education. But reports frequently arise about how hard-earned remittance money is misspent, going to big-screen TVs or even drinking binges.
In addition, Canadian economist John Hoddinot says many migrants send remittances to their parents, uncles and aunts to “ensure hereditary rights,” meaning they have to do so for the long haul and have no guarantees their goal will be realized.
One “bad side” of remittances, says Henry Lagas, husband of Fatima, “is
the people at home don’t try to help themselves. They think, if you live here in Canada, you have big bucks. They don’t know how hard we work to send them money.”
Economists believe remittances can be a positive private form of foreign aid to poor countries. But some also calculate in many cases it would be equally financially beneficial for extended families if loved ones could work at even low-paying jobs in their countries of origin -- and didn’t feel they had to leave for foreign shores in hopes of sending money back home.
FIRST, Birthday celebrant Britney Waito (3rd FROM RIGHT) poses with the Usta family. RIGHT, Dr. Solon and Josephine Guzman (5TH & 6TH FROM LEFT) poses with Senator Tobias Enverga (IN SUIT) and wife Rosemer, with family and friends at the Fiesta ng Kalayaan 2014 festival.
12 L. M. Confidential AUGUST 2014