The Wage Trap at the Heart of the OFW crisis

Here is what the numbers do not tell you about the 57,486 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) from Western Visayas and the Negros Island Region currently in the Middle East: almost none of them want to come home. Not because they feel safe — many have reported bombings near where they live — but because the pay here is worse.

Resilience? No, it is a trap.

Since the Feb. 28 U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and triggered Iranian retaliatory barrages across the Gulf, the Philippine government has scrambled to monitor its citizens abroad.

Public Employment Service Office (PESO)-Iloilo City, which had initially tracked 250 Ilonggo OFWs, has since expanded that list to 551 as of March 4. Of those, only 106 had been profiled and confirmed safe. The rest — 441 workers — were still being verified. And that count only includes those who migrated through official channels. PESO-Iloilo City has openly acknowledged that workers who entered host countries informally remain effectively invisible to the government.

“Monitoring” in practice simply means hotlines, WhatsApp groups, barangay-level verification. It does not mean protection. Officials could not be more plain: support for workers remains limited while they are abroad. The help kicks in only after they manage to get themselves home — assuming flights are even operating, which they mostly are not right now. What the government is running is a contact-tracing exercise, not a protection system. Families with relatives in the Middle East should understand the distinction.

The deeper failure, though, is economic. When asked whether they wanted repatriation, the initial batch of monitored OFWs said no — all of them. Lower compensation at home remains the decisive factor. Think about that. Filipino workers are weighing missile strikes against minimum wage, and minimum wage is losing.

This has been our labor policy story ever since. OFW remittances from the Middle East totaled USD 6.48 billion in 2025 alone, roughly 18 percent of all cash remittances that year. The Department of Migrant Workers reported more than 1.11 million land-based OFWs in the region last year, with over 50 percent of all deployed Filipino workers concentrated in the Gulf. The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry has warned of serious repercussions for the economy if the crisis persists — and they are right. For Iloilo specifically, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in Region 6 has approved PHP 3 million in emergency assistance for families facing disrupted remittances. Spread across even a fraction of the 10,000-plus Ilonggo workers in the Middle East, that is a gesture. It is not a solution.

Meanwhile, the deployment ban on Iran and Israel — in place since 2020 — has turned out to be a paper shield. Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) data still show 475 documented OFWs from the two regions in Israel alone, and at least one in Iran. Deployment bans stop new contracts from being processed. They do nothing for workers already in place, those who overstay, or those who enter through back channels. The policy creates an illusion of protection while leaving the most vulnerable workers outside the formal system and, therefore, outside government reach.

What is most striking, however, is the gap in the diplomatic response. President Marcos, to his credit, has called on all parties to show restraint, and ASEAN foreign ministers issued a joint statement on March 4 calling the escalation “particularly regrettable” and urging an immediate cessation of hostilities. But the language has remained careful, almost polite. Compare this to Malaysia, whose Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim delivered a sharp rebuke in Parliament, calling the strikes on Iran — which occurred while Tehran was engaged in Oman-brokered negotiations — hypocrisy.

The Philippines, chairing ASEAN this year with 2.4 million of its citizens across the Middle East, has both the standing and the strategic interest to be far more vocal. Remittance flows, oil prices, regional stability — the stakes are not abstract. Senate Resolution No. 41 has urged the government to hasten measures to shield the economy and protect OFWs. But calling for a ceasefire with conviction is different from issuing a measured statement and moving on. A nation that exports labor on this scale cannot afford to treat a war that threatens its workers as someone else’s problem.

The question Ilonggo families should be asking is not whether their relatives are being monitored. It is why, after decades of depending on overseas labor, the country still has no credible system for protecting workers in crisis — and no domestic economy strong enough to bring them home without pushing their families into poverty. Until those things change, every conflict in the Middle East will play out the same way: counting heads, activating hotlines, and hoping for the best.