I met a Filipino in a bus station in Glasgow, I named him Juan Dela Cruz ( i only used this alias to protect his identity). He is 36 years old, married and from Batangas Philippines. I meet him in the bus station because we are both waiting for the same coach the National Express going to Manchester. He came and work in the UK in a student visa. His story bothers me so much because I was pondering of why we Filipinos will spend a serious amount of money just to come and work abroad. In fact I realized , if we will spend and use that money to put up a business of our own it should be sustainable. If we just do the hard work that we did here(abroad). The money that we'd used to process our papers, and the payment for the agency is big enough to finance a business. I'm thinking that we are just afraid to gamble for a business that our selves do the responsibility, but we are not afraid to gamble, of giving those money and the responsibility to other person's shoulders, whom we didn't know and had chances to take our money without the return of investment. It's very difficult for me to understand that even we don't had enough funding, we will sell or pawn our properties. just for that ambition of ours, no matter what visa we receive, we will accept as long as we can work abroad... even student visa.....THIS IS HIS STORY Juan is a B.S. accountancy graduate back home, but end up as a care assistant in one of the nursing home in Stockport Cheshire...Their neighbor in Batangas is planning to apply for a job abroad. He ask Juan that both of them will go to Manila to look for an agency that will help them process their papers. they end up to a certain agency that will help them to go to the UK as a student visa( that agency was closed already because of controversy). this agency had a connection of one of the school in London which offers NVQ (national vocational qualification) courses. All they have to do is to pay the processing fee of 22,000 pesos, and the enrolment fee of 77,000 pesos (£974 if £1= 79P hp) and to have a show money of at least Php250,000( the show money or properties[ in some countries] is just to convince the British Embassy that you had the capability to study in the UK).So Juan ask help to his mother to assist him of those expenses. To make the story short his mother helped him, even there are some siblings protesting about his request...Juan arrived in the airport of Birmingham UK ( a city located in the west midland of the country). they were 8 of them 3 males and 5 females. then they were housed in Westhamshire (southern part of the country,near London). The school rented a two 3bedroom houses for their accommodation, one is occupied by the males and the other were occupied by the females..After a month of learning (in theory) of some ideas about care giving they were designated in different nursing homes. They were paid £5.80 per hour, but they only receive £4.80, because the 1pound will be taken by the school. Despite of paying £208 per month for their tuition . And if were talking about the rent ,the males are paying £133 each of them a month and the females are paying £80 each. And the worst thing is that, if you are on student visa the government only allows you to work 20hours a week, beyond that that's questionable,and their are constant inspections ( immigration, home office, etc) on any establishment about the status of each employee.Now if we try to compute the income of Juan it will goes like this. H e worked 20 hours a week and he had £4.80p/hr. He can earned £96 a week x 4 weeks =384p/month. 384 - £208 for the tuition ,- 133 for the rent = £43.£43 that's the amount of money that Juan earned for a month. If we try to convert that into peso it could be Php 3,397.That amount of money is equivalent to a salary of our helper back home. And if you ask me how much is a 4kg long grain rice in TESCO( supermarket giant in the UK)is about £4.80. As a piece of advice, try to secure a work permit before going to Britain to work. It's not to discourage you not to pursue your dreams to live a better life , but to encourage you to be patient and to be wise enough, not to be fooled buy a recruiter which are so greedy for money no matter what it takes.
Now it becomes worst the 20hours working time per week was reduced to 10hours...