Damayan is a grassroots, membership-based organization of low-wage im/migrant Filipino workers, mainly women domestic workers--nannies, housekeepers, babysitters, elderly caregivers, personal cooks, and assistants. Its mission is to organize low-wage workers for their rights and welfare and to connect local issues to global systemic issues such as forced migration and labor export in the Philippines.

How has Damayan been involved in fighting for immigrants’ rights?

Damayan has been directly participating in the immigrant rights movement demanding humane and comprehensive immigration reform since 2006, when local Queens-based organizations working in directly-impacted communities united to build the power of those communities, project their voice and demand a truly pro-people alternative to immigration legislation. Since then, Damayan has been participating in national mobilizations while constantly connecting the issue of immigration to its ongoing programs and campaigns.

Why is immigration an important issue for Damayan and its members?

Damayan believes that labor and immigration are interconnected, and that immigration to the US is a matter of the interplay between labor export and labor import. By advancing the labor rights of workers we are also fighting for immigrant rights because we are asserting that the US economy depends on im/migrant labor.

Damayan members by and large are middle-class professional women in the Philippines who are well-educated. The lack of job opportunities and chronic poverty of the Philippines--caused by globalization and a long history of foreign domination primarily by the US--- forced them to leave in order to support their families. Upon arrival in the US, they discover that the only jobs available to them are in the "informal" domestic work sector, where they will work without labor protections, in isolated workplaces rife with abuse and exploitation, without the right to organize afforded other workers. Employers often use immigration status to further exploit the workers, threatening them with deportation if they assert their rights and/or stealing passports to prevent them from leaving. Further, women members find themselves in the position where the only solution to this situation is to marry a citizen. This is either potentially dangerous because of predatory men, or completely untenable for gay women. Lack of status affects all aspects of members' lives, from work, to housing, to personal relationships, to the basic ability to have some form of identification, to fear or lack of knowledge about available social services. It is an outrage and a human rights disaster that women workers must live in such conditions while caring for the most vital aspects of American lives and the country's future--its homes, its children, its elderly.

At the same time, immigration as an issue or as one aspect of the story of a migrant worker begins in the home country. So to be comprehensive in our immigration campaign we also project homefront Philippines issues and support the Filipino people's aspirations for national industrialization, genuine land reform and other just demands, and by doing so Damayan is also advancing the rights of immigrants.

What will be the effect of bills like Arizona’s SB 1070 on our communities?

We find it alarming that the Arizona law has the potential to be exported to other states or worse, to the federal level. The current Schumer proposal, for example, on the federal level, upholds the 287(g) program that legalizes local police-ICE collaboration and increases border militarization with added border patrol, customs agents, DEA and ICE agents and National Guard to assist with apprehending undocumented people. Damayan also takes note of the fact that this racist anti-immigrant sentiment is at an all-time high in the era of Obama, who ran an appealing campaign based on change and hope, but that deportations and detentions have actually doubled under the Obama administration.

At the same time, we are heartened by the increased organizing work in communities and across campuses, the civil disobedience of students and activists, and the broad calls against SB 1070 made by unlikely allies like Major League Baseball. SB 1070 and other racist, anti-immigrant laws will only ignite further actions and mobilize communities in larger numbers and with greater strength.

What do you think are clear immigration reform demands that we – as progressive communities of color – should be fighting for?

Immigration reform, as a US-based issue, is only part of the problem. We need to address trade policies and the forced migration or displacement of people from developing countries like the Philippines, that cause migration to begin with. Im/migrant Filipino domestic workers know that their lived experience as im/migrants begin with the problems of their home country that forced them to leave in the first place---these problems are caused by globalization's economic policies that likewise govern the political and social reality of the Philippines that these workers are escaping. The workers deal with this reality on both fronts, so our organizing strategies need to as well.

Can you describe some of Damayan’s current campaigns? What do you have planned for the future?

Right now Damayan is deep in preparations for the US Social Forum taking place next month in Detroit, Michigan, where worker delegates will participate in some key national activities, like the 2nd Congress of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the first national Excluded Workers Congress. Damayan is a founding member of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, formed at the first US Social Forum in 2007. The Excluded Workers Congress aims to bring together large sectors of workers who are excluded from the right to organize--domestic workers, day laborers, restaurant workers, taxi drivers, farm workers and others---to share conditions in these industries and organizing innovations that have won some key victories for these workers.

Damayan plans to continue building its base and expand in other areas, both geographically and also in terms of campaigns and programs. Currently, Damayan plans to expand, in particular, its campaign to address labor trafficking and modern-day slavery of domestic workers, and has made some inroads to address this problem in particular with regards to diplomats and domestic workers.

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Nodutdol eNews is the monthly e-mail newsletter of Nodutdol.Through grassroots organization and community development, Nodutdol seeks to bridge divisions created by war, nation, gender, sexual orientation, language, classes and generation among Koreans and to empower our community to address the injustice we and other people of color face here and abroad. Nodutdol works in collaboration with other progressive organizations locally, nationally and internationally as part of a larger movement for peace and social change.

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