Remittances Aren’t Liberation: The Hidden Costs of Sending Money Back Home

Think sending money home is helping the economy? It might cover your cousin’s tuition or your lola’s meds for the month—but it’s also propping up a system that’s built to never change. 

Written By Clifford Temprosa

Every December, airports turn into emotional battlegrounds, arrivals halls overflowing with balikbayans hauling boxes wrapped in duct tape, suitcases stuffed with pasalubong, and envelopes thick with crisp bills. Behind the smiles and tearful reunions is a quiet pride: the pride of having provided, of having endured distance for the sake of survival.

In the Philippines, this ritual has become part of our national identity. The Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) is hailed as the modern-day hero, their remittances praised as the “lifeline” of the nation. Politicians thank them in speeches. Banners welcome them home. But beneath the applause lies a harder truth.

If we have been sending billions home for decades, why isn’t the Philippines any closer to standing on its own feet?

The answer is uncomfortable: remittances, while sustaining families, can also stall systemic change. They keep the nation breathing while its leaders avoid the surgery it desperately needs.

Remittances keep us alive; reform will set us free.

The Hero Narrative vs. The Hidden Cost

The “heroic OFW” narrative is one of the most powerful myths in modern Philippine history, one that tugs at our pride while quietly masking a national failure. Yes, our labor abroad keeps the economy afloat. But it also gives the government cover to avoid fixing the very conditions that drive millions to leave in the first place.

For decades, leaders have chosen the easy revenue of remittances over the harder work of building sustainable industries, creating dignified jobs, and investing in infrastructure that would make migration optional, not inevitable. The World Bank calls remittances “resilient,” but what that really means is that even in global recessions, when jobs dry up and economies slow, Filipinos still send money home because our families’ survival depends on it.

That resilience is not just a blessing, it’s a trap. It keeps loved ones alive while keeping the system broken. Why would policymakers overhaul labor rights, raise wages, or dismantle exploitative recruitment networks when the current setup reliably brings in billions from abroad? When the solution to poverty has been outsourced. Literally. The incentive for reform evaporates.

Survival Over Sovereignty

Economists have warned for years: a country that depends too heavily on remittances builds an economy on quicksand. The revenue may be steady, but it’s fragile, propped up by the sacrifices of people who must leave their homes to earn a living. It’s like putting the nation on life support and calling it health.

The money we send back often disappears into short-term needs: groceries, school fees, medical bills. These are essential, yes, but they rarely translate into long-term assets or structural change. After decades of this cycle, many families are still one illness, one typhoon, or one job loss away from falling back into poverty.

The deeper cost? Sovereignty. When a nation’s economic stability hinges on exporting its own people, it’s not just an economic model, it’s a form of modern economic colonization. We trade away our skills, our talent, and our labor for foreign currency while postponing the hard but necessary work of building a self-reliant economy. Our people become our primary export, and our absence becomes the foundation of the national budget.

This is the unspoken truth: as long as the Philippines is sustained by the money sent by those forced to leave, our leaders can claim progress without delivering it.

When Aid Becomes Anesthesia and a Script for Dependency

Remittances and foreign aid share a similar trap: they can numb the urgency for structural change.

It’s easier for politicians to praise OFWs than to confront the corruption, inequality, and weak institutions that make migration necessary in the first place. Aid becomes anesthesia, keeping the patient alive while avoiding the painful surgery of reform.

But there’s another consequence we don’t talk about: aid and regular remittances can unintentionally reshape the very structure of family relationships and how people see themselves.

Over time, some households begin to internalize the idea that their role is that they “deserve to receive”, not to participate in building collective solutions. Support becomes expected, sometimes even seen as a right, regardless of whether it builds resilience or long-term stability. This shift can:

• Create hierarchies within families where breadwinners abroad are elevated above those who stay, often given more decision-making power in family matters.

• Fuel favoritism and conflict when certain relatives receive more financial support than others, leading to quiet resentment or outright in-fighting.

• Reduce local economic participation when younger family members depend on overseas money instead of seeking their own income streams.

• Alter children’s aspirations when they grow up seeing migration as the default measure of success rather than building a life in the Philippines.

• Erode community ties as remittance recipients disengage from local problem-solving, assuming outside support will always arrive.

For some families, migration brings not just distance but a subtle rewriting of identity: the OFW becomes the provider and savior, and those at home are cast as dependents. The balance between love, duty, and mutual responsibility shifts, and not always in healthy ways.

When foreign aid and diaspora giving reward endurance instead of empowerment, they risk locking families into cycles of survival that discourage innovation, self-reliance, and community-led problem solving.

Alternatives: From Sending Money to Building Power

This doesn’t mean we should stop supporting our families. But it does mean we have to rethink how we send resources home.

• Ethical Investment – Instead of only sending cash for consumption, diaspora communities can invest in cooperatives, social enterprises, and small businesses that create local jobs.

• Grassroots Funding – Channel giving into community-led projects such as solar power initiatives, farmer collectives, education funds, where accountability is built in.

• Movement Support – Back organizations fighting for systemic reforms: living wages, labor rights, healthcare access, and anti-corruption campaigns.

These approaches keep money circulating locally and build infrastructure for independence.

From Sending Money to Changing Policy

If we are serious about breaking this cycle, remittances must be paired with systemic reform - designed not just for the economy, but for the millions of Filipinos working abroad who deserve the choice to come home. That means:

1. National Labor Retention Policies – Strengthen domestic job creation through industrial diversification, incentives for local entrepreneurship, and enforcement of labor standards that make staying in the country viable. For OFWs, this means having the option to earn a dignified wage without leaving family behind.

2. Tax and Investment Reform – Create incentives for diaspora investment into productive sectors such as renewable energy, manufacturing, and technology, rather than just consumption-based imports. This gives OFWs a way to turn hard-earned remittances into assets that build long-term economic independence at home.

3. Agricultural Revitalization – Prioritize food sovereignty through subsidies for farmers, modern irrigation, and cooperative models to reduce rural migration. For many OFWs from farming provinces, this could mean returning to revitalized hometowns with stable incomes and modernized livelihoods.

4. Public Infrastructure Development – Allocate national and local budgets toward transportation, healthcare, and education systems that reduce the “push factors” driving migration. For OFWs, this means knowing their families have access to services and opportunities without relying solely on money from abroad.

5. Migrant Reintegration Programs – Establish pathways for OFWs to return, reinvest, and participate in nation-building, including skills transfer programs and access to credit for business creation. Reintegration shouldn’t feel like starting from zero, it should be a bridge from overseas experience to local impact.

These are not acts of charity. They are acts of sovereignty, giving OFWs and their families the right to build a future in the Philippines rather than abroad by necessity.

The Next Chapter for the Filipino Diasporic Dream

Diaspora wealth is powerful, but its power is squandered if it only plugs the holes left by government neglect. We cannot keep pouring our sweat and sacrifice into a system that survives in absence.

Remittances are not the cure. They are a lifeline that, without change, can become a leash that binds our economy to dependency and our people to perpetual migration.

If we do not shift our values now, toward ethical investment, grassroots movements, and structural reform, then we are choosing a future where the Philippines remains a labor-export economy for the next 50 years. That is not resilience. That is resignation.

We owe our families more than survival. We owe our country more than remittances.

Love can keep a family alive. But only justice can keep a nation free. And justice begins when we stop sending our people away to save the nation, and start building a nation worth staying for.

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Written By Clifford Temprosa

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