Filipinos for Rebuilding Iraq

Via Pejmanesque, Daniel Drezner quotes from an AP story on Philippine President President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's ban on allowing Filipinos from going to Iraq to help rebuild it. Her action follows the kidnapping of Filipino Angelo dela Cruz by Iraqi thugs. In exchange for his release, Arroyo agreed to pull Filipino troops from the Coalition ahead of schedule. During a protest demanding the lifting of the travel ban, police used water canon to disperse the crowd and made arrests.

The protesters want to take advantage of relatively lucrative contracts with the U.S. military, which would pay them some $650 per month ($7,800 per year) in a country with a per capita GDP of $4,600. Forty percent of the population lives below the poverty level and over eleven percent is unemployed.

Through her actions, President Arroyo is hampering the ability of workers to escape the dire poverty of their homeland and support their families as best they can. The free movement of people provides for both those needs. Absent that freedom, they are left to the designs of local employers and corrupt government officials. Like all workers, they desire alternatives, and the competition provided by their free movement is needed to help force domestic industry to modernize and improve its treatment of workers.

Beyond that, Arroyo's cave-in awards the radicals in Iraq who'd like nothing better than to rid the country of "infidels" from outside the area. As Drezner says, this is what happens when you appease terrorists.