Analysis of Marcos Jr.’s 2025 budget for OFWs

Filipino Migrants reject Marcos Jr’s 2025 budget cuts to OFW services

The Marcos Jr. administration’s proposed budget decrease for OFW services in 2025 will deprive millions of OFWs of crucial protections. Up to this point, services from the government’s Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) have already been insufficient and inaccessible to many overseas Filipinos. With the scaled-down DMW budget for 2025, OFWs will find themselves all the more betrayed by the very government that pushed them to work abroad.

Despite the growing number of Filipinos forced to leave the country for work, billions of pesos in budget cuts for the DMW and its agencies are looming. Marcos Jr. plans to slash over a quarter of the DMW budget, with an overall 28.7% decrease from Php 6.3 bn in 2024 to Php 4.5 bn in 2025.

Funding for the DMW’s Labor Migration Policy and International Cooperation Program is about to receive a whopping 132% hike, while the budget for its Overseas Employment and Welfare Program will decrease by 35%. Additionally, funds alloted for OWWA’s Social Welfare and Protection Program will only go up by 0.94%.

This demonstrates that the Marcos Jr.’s administration’s budget priority is not to uphold the rights and well-being of our migrant workers but to beef up and intensify its Labor Export Program as part of a neoliberal strategy among third world countries, at the cost of protecting, providing support and attaining justice for OFWs who face exploitative conditions.  

The budget for the regulation and oversight of OFW recruitment agencies is also slated to be cut by 3.45%, a cause for concern when cases of illegal recruitment and human trafficking are on the rise. 

Marcos Jr. is abandoning OFWs amid more crises abroad

With its defunding of already scarce and out of reach OFW services, the Marcos Jr. administration is exposing itself to be out of touch with the current realities facing overseas Filipinos. Marcos Jr. is turning a blind eye while OFWs are reeling through worsening political and economic turmoil around the world.

Filipino migrants find themselves caught in escalations of conflict in areas like the Middle East, where the Zionist state is waging brutal wars against the peoples of Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen. Others are vulnerable to anti-migrant host governments and the climate of hate, racism and xenophobia that they are perpetuating in Europe and North America.

On August 16, the DFA urged all Filipinos to leave Lebanon following Israeli attacks on Beirut. The OWWA claimed that there are enough funds for emergency repatriation from Lebanon. This may be true now, but the proposed budget cuts will impact future rescue and repatriation services, including livelihood and employment services  for OFWs returning home from conflict zones. 

OFWs who face unjust termination, labor exploitation and abuse by their employers on a growing scale are in need of various forms of support such as access to legal and financial assistance and welfare services such as temporary shelters.Thousands of migrants are unjustly arrested and detained for escaping abusive employers or for being undocumented. While others like Mary Jane Veloso are detained for crimes they did not commit. Despite the scale of these rights violations facing Filipino migrant workers globally, the Marcos Jr. Government neglects its duty to provide social services and welfare protection and instead places this burden on recruitment agencies, employers and OFWs themselves. OWWA’s programs and services for OFWs and their families are not fully subsidized by the Government, limiting the number of OFWs who can benefit from them. 

It has not prioritized allocating additional resources to support distressed OFWs. For example, it currently only has one temporary shelter with an 8 bed capacity in Hong Kong for an OFW population of more than 190,000 and instead of expanding the shelter’s capacity, OWWA will spend a colossal P60 M per year in rent on a new OWWA center. 

Meanwhile, its shelters in Kuwait are constantly cramped, and in Europe, where Filipino nurses were assaulted by anti-migrant rioters in northern England on August 2 and where there are increasing reports of human trafficking of Filipinos, there are no government shelters at all.

During its own budget hearing on August 13, the Department of Foreign Affairs boasted of government efforts to step up against human trafficking. Their report does not reflect the reality of a growing number of Filipinos falling victim to human trafficking and illegal recruitment schemes. Some of these schemes are being run by government officials themselves.

In South Korea, Filipino seasonal farm workers were recruited by their local governments back in Cagayan Valley to work exploitative, dangerous, and low-paying agricultural jobs. In Hong Kong, a visa consultancy firm owned by a former Cebu City councilor was also found to be scamming Filipinos with promises of work through student visa pathways.

Government neglect and extortion: a double burden on OFWs

While the Marcos Jr. regime continues to deprive Filipino migrants of their rights to social and welfare protections, it is squeezing dry millions of OFWs through exorbitant and mandatory fees such as OEC, SSS, Pag-IBIG and PhilHealth. By shaking OFWs down before leaving them to the wolves, the Philippine government treats migrant workers only as funding sources to pay for their gargantuan debts and trade deficits.

The combined incomes in mandatory fees exacted by the Marcos Jr. administration from the 2.3 mil Filipinos who left the country in 2023 amount to an estimate of Php 11 billion. This enormous sum is nearly double the proposed 2025 budget for the DMW.

Through its mass extortion of OFWs, the Philippine government has more than enough money for welfare services that Filipino migrants urgently need and deserve. But Marcos Jr. would rather waste public funds on his own lavish trips and displays of wealth, infrastructure projects that do not address the roots of unemployment and poverty, and a monstrous defense budget for 2025.

Migrants demand a pro-OFW budget for 2025

Migrante International demands increases in the national budget to bolster direct services and protections for migrant workers. Funding for direct OFW assistance should account for the lion’s share of the budget of the DMW and OWWA’s programs and services should be fully subsidized by the PH government. More OFWs and families should be able to access and receive immediate and comprehensive services such as:

• Financial and livelihood aid;
• Medical assistance and counseling services;
• Communication and transportation assistance;
• Legal assistance;
• Education assistance;
• And rescue and repatriation assistance.

In addition to the aforementioned direct services and protections, we demand that:

• The unused funds of Migrant Workers Offices be used to hire additional staff to assist OFWs;
• More migrant shelters with expanded bed capacity for all genders are set up, especially in the Middle East, Asia and Europe;
• Livelihood, jobs, and support programs for returning OFWs, including those released from jail, the economically displaced, and those returning from conflict zones;
• Seafarers gain free access to retraining and certification services;
• And more state-run training centers for seafarers be built in addition to the National Maritime Polytechnic

The 2025 OFW budget must prioritize the rights, welfare and dignity of Filipino migrant workers and not decrease the budget for critical services and protection. For as long as the Marcos Jr. regime continues to uphold the neoliberal framework of labor export, OFWs across the globe will be pushed to unite and fight for a government that genuinely advances their democratic interests and aspirations.