Inter Press Service - December 6, 2001
Ranjit Devraj

Why does the Italian priest forego the performance of an important social rite? He does not want to be party to what is jokingly referred to on this industrial hub and island republic as "Taiwan Love Marriages", the course of which can be as unpredictable and as devastating as the typhoons that sweep this island.

"More than 75 percent of the 300,000 odd migrant workers in Taiwan (of whom 80,000 are Filipinos) are here on false identities and their real ages and marital status are uncertain," Ciceri told IPS.

Though they are illegal and attract severe penalties, false identities are convenient to everyone.

For one, they allow workers a way to circumvent laws that prevent the extension of stay in this country beyond three years. For another, employers save time and money on training new workers and also have an extra handle on them in case of disputes, Ciceri said.

Complications do arise. "Recently I had to send back to the Philippines the body of a woman who came here on a passport issued to her sister-in-law and died - now the sister-in-law is officially dead," he said.

But false identities apparently are also conducive to encouraging a tendency toward the high-risk behaviour that leading sociologists say Asia's young adults are increasingly prone to.

At an international conference here in late November on 'Asian Youth at Risk' sponsored by the Taiwanese government and the East-West Centre in Hawaii, academics warned of increasing rates in smoking, drinking and extramarital sex among young people.

Although the specific problem of migrant workers swarming to prosperous Taiwan from the East Asian neighbourhood was not on the agenda of the three-day conference, which ended Friday, participants took the opportunity to say that their concerns about high-risk behaviour involving migrant labourers as well.

"The situation of young migrant workers as a particularly vulnerable group calls for special attention," said Eddy Hasmi, director of Adolescent and Reproductive Rights Protection group and a framer of migrant worker policy in the Indonesian government.

"Sending countries seem interested solely in the money that migrant workers repatriate," lamented Michael Tan of the University of the Philippines and a health activist, addressing the delegates.

Tan's colleague and researcher on adolescent sexuality, Corazon Raymundo, said that being away from home - some 800,000 Filipinos leave for overseas work each year -- takes away the two important "protective factors" of family and religion for young people of both sexes.

Raymundo's academic propositions including one that holds that one kind of risk-taking soon leads to "multiple risk-taking", is discernible at a Filipino watering hole here, called 'Combat Zone' because it was once patronised by American soldiers on rest and recreation from the Vietnam War.

"Filipinos who come to Taiwan smoke, drink and have messy affairs far more than they do back home - and they all claim to be single," said migrant worker Jackie Sotelo through the smoke haze and jazz music at the Manila Pub, on Combat Zone.

The vast majority of Filipino overseas workers here are in factory work, although many of them do not get the jobs they had signed for and up working in poultry and piggery in the rural areas. Filipino women workers hold jobs both as factory workers and as domestic workers as well.

Father Cicero thinks that compared to Filipinos, Thais and Indonesians -- the two other major migrant groups here -- are far more likely to indulge in high-risk behaviour. He attributes this to the fact that most Filipinos are likely to have finished schooling and many are graduates.

The priest's observations tie in with research findings trotted out at the conference that schooling is another important protective factor that works against high-risk behaviour.

He says Filipino men generally stay away from commercial sex workers, preferring instead to seek out women from among their own kind. But there is also lesbian relationships that emerge among Filipino women workers.

Sotelo agreed with this, while saying the women were "really bisexual" and quick to drop women partners when they found suitable male partners. For example, Sotelo added, "I nearly committed suicide after my girlfriend left me for a man - but I have found someone else."

According to Cicero, lesbian relationships are common because they work as a protective factor against unwanted pregnancies and the quick termination and deportation they invite, while satisfying a natural need for intimacy especially in a place away from home.

At St Christopher's church, not far from the bright neon signs of 'combat zone', Sister Ditma Luz Trocio said Taiwanese laws that forbid migrant workers from getting pregnant are a serious violation of human rights.

"If pregnancies and abortions continue to occur, it is at least partly because of the lack of privacy in the unsegregated dormitories in which migrant workers are housed in even by some well-known transnational companies," Trocio said.

Sundays at St. Christopher's are festive occasions -- and a venue for what many of the academics at the November conference may categorise as high-risk behaviour.

Said Diosdado Lopegu, who runs the Migrant Worker's Concern Desk at the church, "The church is a place for making social contacts and deep religious convictions are usually missing. "

According to Lopegu, migrants are generally not practising Catholics where they came from and their faith is not enough to protect them here. "But at least if they keep coming here on Sundays we can gradually modify their behaviour," he pointed out.

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