Throwback Thursday is a Facebook culture that is fun and makes one feel sentimental. Meanwhile, the forced remittance bill is a throwback nightmare that is all about raising funds for the government and makes one feel nothing but contempt for its proponents.

House Bill 3576 authored by former ambassador Roy Señeres from the party-list group OFW Family Club seeks to penalize overseas Filipino workers (OFW) who fail to remit money through formal banking channels to the Philippines, as if it is a magnanimous gesture for our family.

OFW Facebook users immediately went up in arms upon reading the feeds circulating on the said bill, with reactions ranging from outright indignation to sarcastic ones like inquiring Señeres’ account number so they can remit to him directly.

All in all, it is an unpopular bill that is rightly branded as another burden for Filipino migrants.

Flashback to 1982: former Pres. Ferdinand Marcos implemented Executive Order 857 that expressed essentially the same provisions as the HB3576. As a result, it exerted an unnecessary pressure – for OFWs do remit to their family, as they are the reason why they migrated –to Filipinos overseas to ensure their regular remittance even to the extent of taking up extra jobs or borrowing money to avoid getting penalized.

Fast forward to present-day: labour export is a multibillion dollar industry for the Philippine government. OFW remittance comprised 10% of the country’s GDP in 2012 and by the first half of 2013, already registered a 5.8 percent increase as compared to the level of the same period in 2012. Remittance is the crux to the neoliberal globalization model of migration for development and HB3576, advertently or inadvertently, trails along such line that treats overseas workers as commodities and mere dollar-earners.

For someone that purports to champion OFW rights and wellbeing, Señeres is way off touch with the real condition and sentiments of Filipinos abroad.

Opposition to EO857 was like a wildfire that mobilized thousands of OFWs around the world and in Hong Kong, it triggered the formation of the United Filipinos Against Forced Remittance or UNFARE. A year later, the coalition was transformed into the United Filipinos in Hong Kong (UNIFIL -HK) that is now considered as one of the most vibrant, active and widest formation of OFWs in the world that is working towards genuine social change in the Philippines to end labour export and forced migration of Filipinos. The likes of the UNIFIL were later on formed in other countries, bonded together to form Migrante International and, as we say, the rest is history.

HB3576 is a throwback nightmare. Let OFWs face it squarely, from Facebook to the streets, with a collective strength that will be a present-day horror for the author and this BS government.