The article Caring across Borders: Motherhood, Marriage, and Filipina Domestic Workers in California by Charlene Tung really struck me as I was reading it. Having grown up with a Filipino domestic helper, somehow I managed to understand their struggles. It was heartening to read about how these women left their home and families to venture to foreign lands to make a living.
Compared to the Cambodian/Vietnamese women we saw in the film Eating Welfare on Monday, these Filipino women were in better circumstances as many of them could speak English.
It might be selfish of me to say this, but I empathize with the Filipinos, but not so much with the Cambodians. This is because these Filipino women put in the effort to learn the language and travel all the way to the United States on their own to work. The jobs they take up are physically and emotionally taxing, but yet they continue to work to make money. On the other hand, it seemed in the film that the Cambodians/Vietnamese who came to the United States started out on welfare and I guess took that for granted. They remained in their communities and did not learn the language unlike the Filipinos who integrated themselves into the American lifestyle because of who they lived with. I thought it was unfair that the children had to skip school and act as translators for their parents who were trying to reclaim their welfare after it was taken away. I do not see why the parents thought that they would be able to come to America for a better life without learning the language and relying on welfare, after all is it not tax money that is going towards their welfare? It might seem heartless for me to say this, but then why do people protest when their tax payments increase?
No comments:
Post a Comment