How Filipinos Send Their Packages From Abroad

By Douglas Mitchell


Some individuals with entrepreneurial minds engage in business while others make use of their profession as individual practitioners or as employees attached to reputable corporations. Others engage in trade and commerce. These bring them to other countries which become their adopted nation. One Asian culture, in particular, is the tendency to send items back to their home. They do this by making use of balikbayan box padala.

This particular container is a cultural expression of close knit family relations in the Philippines. It is a practice ingrained in attitudes and habits of the people from this nation. Even before the advent of this box, it has been a common practice to bring home some excess food during fiestas. When people travel to a different island, they are expected to bring home something.

This practice is peculiar only to this particular nation which is archipelagic and is composed of more than seven thousand islets and islands. It is geographically subdivided into three main regions namely Luzon, Mindanao, and the Visayan Islands. This is a largely Roman Catholic country with many other Christian denominations. Only Mindanao has a substantial Muslim influence.

Each of these geographical divisions has different attitudes and attributes. The northern part where the capital city is located largely speaks Tagalog. Both the central and the southern population generally speaks in Visayan with various variations. The peoples of this nation are very regionalistic and even among localities differences are highlighted by the difference in speech and intonation.

The cultural influences were brought to other places where Filipino workers migrated to in seeking more viable job opportunities in the United States. The influx started with the shortage of professional nurses during the early seventies which the Philippines had plenty of. This started a trend of educational mass production of nurses. Often these workers are granted permanent residency status.

Hospitality is one of the greatest traits of Filipinos. They seem to have a special skill in making strangers feel at home. This trait is even more pronounced when they deal with blood relatives and friends to the point of spending hard earned money and really taking the time to send gifts and present to family and friends in the Philippines. They send it using the balikbayan box.

This cultural aberration was eventually recognized by the government and appropriate legislation were crafted and implemented that reduced customs duties and taxes for items sent by overseas Filipino workers. This is in recognition of the marriage of fifty years of American occupation and three hundred years of Spanish colonial rule. That is three hundred years of religion and fifty years of Hollywood.

This concept was developed as a return favor for the contributions of migrant workers to the economy. However, this became chaotic in the aftermath of the nine eleven attacks. With the creation of the homeland security department, all these containers were opened and thoroughly inspected resulting in a delay of up to about a month or two.

This is a very unique program implemented by a government for the benefit of its citizenry. It is now very popular and been very cost effective from the perspective of its migrant employees. But as with other nations, it is difficult to monitor the packages when it passes through customs or the official postal service. Pilferage is still very rampant concerning this.




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