Out of the box

KAHON NG mga pangarap. The box of dreams: so rightly, so fondly, tagged has been the balikbayan box.

Pangarap to the loved ones back home, simple dreams gloriously fulfilled in Adidas shoes and Nike shirts, Dove soap and Olay cream, Alicafe and Lipton tea, Barbie doll and Tamiya car, Libby’s and Toblerone, and some other sweet etcetera.

Pangarap to the loving senders braving the desert sands of Dubai and the oil fields of Arabia, dodging the bombs in Iraq, scrubbing the cramped flats of Hong Kong and Singapore, caregiving in the hospitals of London and the nursing homes of Canada, riding the waves of the North Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Pacific in finding the full measure of their sacrifice to ensure, if only for a time, a better life for the families they left behind.           

Each and every balikbayan box invested with drops of blood, sweat, tears of the overseas Filipino worker, expended and spilled for months on end. Packed with tender, loving care: “…ang OFW pa mismo ang mag-aayos kasi may sense of belongingness sa pag-aayos ng box. Pinapangalanan kung para kanino ang bawat item… Simpleng bagay sa iba pero para sa amin, meaningful pati ang ayos at bawat nilalaman ng isang balikbayan box.” As former caregiver Bhing Comiso of the Pinoy Expat/OFW Bloggers Awards put it, so poignantly.

Finding its English translation in Sen. Bongbong Marcos: "For every OFW, a balikbayan box is the equivalent of his or her love letter to a spouse and the rest of the family. Every item inside that box was bought with a specific person and purpose in mind, bought for with the hard-earned money of our modern-day heroes."

Kahon ng pagmamahal, indeed. “It is an expression of love, and we always look forward to hearing about how its contents made our family happy.” As Lito Soriano, a former-OFW-turned-businessman, summed it, so precisely. “This is why a balikbayan box is so sacred to OFWs.”

That sanctity now set for vicious violation by the state. With the Bureau of Customs poised to impose tougher measures, read: random opening and taxation, on balikbayan boxes on the suspicion that these are being used to smuggle in taxable goods.

Per law tracing back to the Marcos era, balikbayan boxes are duty- and tax-free packages designed for overseas Filipino workers sending home gifts to their families. But with certain limitations, such as canned goods, grocery items and other household effects not exceeding a dozen a kind; the contents not exceeding $500 in value; and one consignment per sender during a one-month period.

Limitations readily contained in even the biggest of the standard sizes of the balikbayan box, at 24x18x24 inches.

Only by the longest stretch of imagination then can be acceded Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina’s allegation that his bureau is losing about P50 million a month, or P600 million in revenue each year due to “technical smuggling” involving balikbayan boxes.

Bah, Sir, Prada, Hermes, and Louis Vuitton are too impossible a dream for OFWs to box and send home.

Indeed, Sir, there just cannot be any Porsches and Ferraris, not even a Honda Wave inside balikbayan boxes.

Right is Sen. Ralph Recto: “The bigger issue is for BoC to run after big-time smugglers, those who, for example, bring in rice in ships as big as a mall…As in the case of the reported smuggling of oil and fuel, tankers are a million times bigger and easier to spot than a balikbayan box.”

Iba ang tinitingnan sa tinititigan, as the Tagalogs will readily apply to the BoC and Lina here.

More precise is Marcos Junior: "You seem bent on bullying our OFWs while turning a blind eye on the large-scale smuggling that goes on in nearly all ports across the archipelago."

Come to think of it, ain’t the broker Lina’s assignment at the BoC analogized to Dracula being made the head of a blood bank? Shucks!

And more from Bongbong: "Are they planning to impose taxes on balikbayan boxes to make up for their annual collection deficit? In bullying our OFWs, they managed to expose their own internal deficiencies."

And, yes, maybe even to make the poor OFWs compensate for the crime of the big-time smugglers privileged to have a carancho in the BoC honcho.

Ah, how the OFWs broke the internet with their denunciation of this rapacious violation by the state of their sacred gift of self to their loved ones!

But they – we too – should have seen this coming. The signs have not been wanting.

One. The utter disrespect by the BS Aquino administration of the OFWs verbalized by no less than presidential loudmouth Lacierda in that dismissive sneer: "Hindi naman sa gobyerno napupunta ang ipinapadalang dolyar ng mga OFW's kaya hindi ito nararamdaman direkta sa ekonomiya ng bansa."

Two. The abject absence of any referral to the OFWs in the BS’ State of the Nation Addresses.   

Three. Manila International Airport Authority GM Jose Angel Honrado’s  Memorandum Circular No. 8 series of 2014 including the OFWs in the payment of  P550 terminal fee notwithstanding Republic Act 10022 or the Migrants Workers Act exempting OFWs from it.

Just three of the most overt manifestations there of the express policy of callousness and cruelty of the BS administration obtaining from its acquired ineptness and inherent inanity in governance.

That policy running through the thread of “Buhay ka pa naman, di ba?” and “Bahala kayo sa buhay ninyo!” in the immediate aftermath of Yolanda, the presidential no-show at the arrival honors for the SAF’s Fallen 44 and the smirk of a smile during the subsequent necrological services for the heroes, add to that their non-mention too in the last SONA, and “Hindi naman fatal siguro ang traffic” on the daily EDSA gridlocks.   

How the Filipino people can bear – for so long – this BS maladministration can only be explained by their genetic kinship with the damulag, the all-too patient, uncomplaining beast of burden.  

Or, by the affirmation of that Marcos era truism attributed to US Sen. Mike  Mansfield of the Philippines as a nation of 40 million cowards and one son of a bitch.

Best yet, by that political maxim “We deserve those whom we elect,” even bettered to “We are whom we elect.”

Still, hope springs eternal, the OFWs finding their casus belli may just take the Filipino out of the apathy and indifference he has been boxed in.        

End the Yellow Peril in 2016!