The real OFW hero is also an investor in RP

Hansen Sy - Philippine Daily Inquirer — March 16, 2010

I REFER TO THE EDITORIAL, "Passport to properity?" (PDI, 10/27/05) While it is true that working abroad somehow gives us a passport to prosperity, it’s still just a step closer. I believe that our positive response to Sen. Manuel Villar’s call for us to go up the next level from OFW to OFI (overseas Filipino investor) will make prosperity a reality. House bills like that should be passed expediently.
Many of my friends here in Singapore, including myself, dream of putting up our own business. We are determined to help the towns where we come from gererate wealth. Brain drain only happens when we totally uproot ourselves and never go back. But there are many of us OFWs who consider this stage of our lives as only a season of learning and acquiring better skills. We dream of going back and helping our communities realize their potentials to be economically prosperous. The question for us is when. When do we go back? Apparently, this becomes the hardest question everyone of us struggles with. When things become perfect at home? No, we realize that there is no perfect timing.
So while we make it out here and figure out how to make it there again, we urge our lawmakers and our rich countrymen who are capable of creating businesses, to improve our country’s economy, so that opportunities for employment will be aplenty, and we would need foreign talents more that we need to export local ones. And all of us OFWs would go home.
While we a re called the new heroes of our economy, we don’t really feel like it. Once, a Singaporean taxi driver asked me what I was doing is Singapore. And then he went on to boast that he’s got a chicken farm in Mindoro even if he’s not a Filipino or even if he doesn’t have a Filipino wife or family, because he wanted to help our poor country. He advised me to go back and make our country wealthier. I may doubt his sincerity or scorn his bragging, but the truth is, most of us here would really like to go back and help our country become better. And see ourselves sending money from home to destitute places in Africa or to other needy places in the world. That makes for real heroism.
Who does not want to be called a hero? But most certainly, none of us OFWs feel like one. Those who generate wealth from our own resources back home are the real heroes. They are the pillars of our economy. OFWs are here today, gone tomorrow. So, may all OFWs be OFIs and be a "brain gain" for our beloved country.