Overseas Filipino workers have long been among our nation’s quiet pillars. In recent years, Filipinos working abroad have sent home close to US $38 billion annually, amounting to nearly eight percent of our gross domestic product. These remittances are more than economic figures. They are lifelines that sustain families, strengthen communities, and stabilize the national economy during uncertain times.

Behind every dollar sent home is product of sacrifice — long working hours, unfamiliar cultures, and time spent far from loved ones. For many families, remittances mean dignity rather than luxury. Children kept in school, access to healthcare, modest homes built or repaired, and small businesses started. Across towns and barangays, overseas Filipinos have quietly helped nurture a growing middle class and infused local economies with resilience and hope.

Looking back, our own experience in the Middle East reflects this broader Filipino journey. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, our companies ventured into the Arab world at a time when few had done so. Through Landoil Resources Corporation, Global Electrification Corporation, and Philsinports, a joint venture with Singapore’s port authority, we helped operate major ports in Jeddah on the Red Sea and Jubail on the Persian Gulf, among the earliest Philippine-led projects in the region.

Our companies also helped establish the electrification network in Saudi Arabia’s vast Central Region around Riyadh, deploying thousands of Filipino engineers and electricians who quietly powered development far from home.

During those years, we employed more than 50,000 Filipinos across Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Libya with our various business ventures. They were engineers, electricians, technicians, and skilled workers — many among the first Filipinos to work in large numbers in the Middle East. When many returned home, they brought not only savings but confidence and experience. Homes rose in the countryside, small enterprises took root, and the country benefited from valuable foreign exchange.

Those early efforts helped open doors for the millions of Filipinos who followed. Today, over a million of our countrymen live and work across the Arab world as doctors, nurses, engineers, construction workers, service staff, musicians, and entrepreneurs.

Some overseas Filipinos remained in the Middle East. Others crossed the Red Sea into Africa, passed through the Suez Canal, and settled in Europe. In this sense, they mirrored an earlier generation who crossed the Pacific to work in the farms and fish canneries of California and Alaska. Over time, many became citizens abroad, consistently supporting families back home while building new lives overseas.

Today, Filipino communities across the United States and other parts of the world stand as testaments to perseverance. Many achieved middle-class stability. Some prospered as professionals, scholars, and entrepreneurs. A number returned home to serve in public office or establish businesses that created jobs and shared opportunity. Their success was rarely loud, often understated, but deeply consequential.

In the international community, overseas Filipinos may play only a modest role. Yet they are widely respected for their professionalism, adaptability, and humanity. They bring with them not only skills, but values — hard work, empathy, and a strong sense of family — that enrich the societies they serve.

Ultimately, the story of overseas Filipinos is not merely an economic narrative. It is a human one — of parents who miss milestones so their children may have better futures, of communities uplifted by shared sacrifice, and of a nation sustained by the dignity of honest labor abroad. Their saga reminds us that patriotism is often expressed far from home, through perseverance, humility, and an enduring commitment to family and country.