Today, let’s turn our disgust to the government’s comedic masterpiece: the “Balik Scientist” program. They’re giving “incentives” and maybe even a free halo-halo to lure our brilliant scientists back from the promised lands abroad. As if a pat on the back and a few pesos could compete with the sweet embrace of actual opportunity elsewhere. How delightfully futile!
The graph from their website (shown above) only shows scientists that went back to the Philippines. Their website doesn’t show how many went away. Can you take a guess?
Our universities produce a lot of graduates, armed with degrees in IT, nursing, engineering, and all manner of “globally competitive” skills. But competitive for whom? Not us, that’s for sure! These programs are tailor-made for the needs of foreign overlords—coding for Silicon Valley apps, caregiving for aging Western populations, and engineering solutions for problems we don’t even have here.
Why do we bother offering such extravagant educational fiestas if our own table is set with nothing but adobo and rice? Thank you for asking. It’s simple: We’re training our youth to be the perfect export commodity. A human assembly line for the world’s service sector!
Agriculture degrees? Sure, those make sense, we’ve got plenty of land, and someone has to tend the rice paddies while the rest of us dream of greener (dollar-denominated) pastures. But sophisticated science labs? Ha! Our “labs” are more like vintage museums, where beakers gather dust and microscopes peer longingly at the horizon, wishing they were in Singapore or the States.
The “Balik Scientist” initiative is a band-aid solution to a wound inflicted by our own inefficiency. Why beg these expatriate geniuses to return when we haven’t bothered to build the ecosystem they need to thrive? We need a culture that takes their contribution seriously. Published journal articles are not just fire hazards. Great nations becames great because they take great ideas seriously, not the other way around.
Instead of fostering a home where scientists can experiment, collaborate, and actually invent things (imagine that!), we’re content to watch them flee Let them conquer foreign frontiers, earning those fat salaries while we bask in the ironic glow of our self-imposed dependency.
We, the Colonist Party, train scientists for our New Immigration Army (NIA), and we train them to never accept a balik-scientist incentive. We have trained them well to salute to the brain drain that’s bleeding us dry in the most exhilarating way. Not just scientists. Need more call center agents in Texas? Boom: NIA battalion activated! Short on nurses in the UK? We’ve got them lined up, passports in hand.
And here’s the best part: They won’t be “contributing” back home through those pesky remittances, because they will be bringing their whole family with them! Why taint their pure servitude with ties to the motherland?
Renounce that citizenship, comrades! Cut the cord and embrace full masochistic freedom. After all, true self-sufficiency comes not from building labs or retaining talent, but from exporting every last ounce of potential until we’re gloriously hollowed out.
So, to the architects of the “Balik Scientist” program: Keep dreaming, darlings. Your incentives are as effective as a rain dance in a typhoon. We’ll stick to our mission: promoting the exquisite agony of eternal emigration. Raise a toast with us at the Colonist Party (with imported beer, naturally) to a Philippines that’s independent in name only.