Several scores of members of Compatriots gathered recently to hold the historic convention of the Filipino migrant movement. The revolutionary organization Compatriots represents the special sector of Filipino migrants under the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
Within the framework of the rectification movement, Compatriots affirmed its role to organize and mobilize Filipino compatriots for the national democratic revolution, wherever they are in the world. Filipino migrants number up to 15 million, including millions of temporary workers in low-class jobs. Since 2023, nearly 10,000 Filipinos leave the country every day due to lack of local jobs, absence or insufficient income, and very low wages, land and livelihood disenfranchisement. Through the labor export policy, the reactionary state sacrifices them to ease the country’s employment crisis. They are daily fleeced by millions of pesos in the form of fees for basic services that do not even benefit them.
In foreign countries, they endure abuse, labor rights violations, racism or racial discrimination, violence, and very high migration costs. They have no protections, especially female workers in jobs most vulnerable to abuse and crime.
Compatriots studied the summing up of over four decades of revolutionary work among migrants and drew lessons from recorded rich experiences. It reviewed the lessons of the first and second great rectification movements to contextualize the current rectification movement against subjectivism, conservatism, ultra-democracy, and bureaucratism.
The conference also studied the social investigation and class analysis (SICA) prepared by its committees in various countries and continents. Using these, Compatriots answered and clarified immediate questions regarding the sector and set policies for expansion and organizing.
To advance the interests of Filipino migrants, Compatriots emphasized the need to build organizations among their ranks to promote their democratic rights, including the right to employment and social protections in the countries where they work. It also ensured the organizing of underground mass organizations that will serve as partners of the Party in leading the migrant movement, strengthening the movement of Filipino migrant workers and the broad multisectoral patriotic mass movement of Filipinos in various countries. Compatriots foresee that the growth of these movements will increase their contribution to anti-imperialist solidarity, as well as the advancement of the international proletarian revolution.
The situation of migrants is closely linked to the issues faced by the people in the Philippines, such as low wages of workers and landlessness, bureaucrat-capitalists corruption under the ruling state, and the domination of US imperialism in Philippine society. Given a choice, they would prefer to stay in the country with their loved ones. While outside the country, their ultimate desire is to return to their homeland.
Being Filipinos, migrants are recognized as integral to the national liberation movement. The solution to their migration is the advancement of the national democratic revolution. The challenge for Compatriots is to strengthen the movement against the exploitative and oppressive puppet reactionary state in the Philippines and to expand support for the protracted people’s war amidst the intensifying fascism worldwide.
The Party and the Filipino people see migrants in their numbers returning to the Philippines to participate in the revolutionary movement in the country, especially in the arena of armed struggle, to help forge a truly free, democratic, and prosperous society.
