Promise and peril of PH seafarers harboring ‘American Dream’

INSIDE THE PORT OF LONG BEACH, California—Hope and fear, the two primal emotions that drive humans to survive, were very much on the mind of Filipino seafarer Mark Lenard Petras as he stepped again on American soil on Wednesday (Thursday in Manila) after five months at sea.

Hope is what’s driving this 27-year-old sailor from Dagupan, Pangasinan, that someday he and his wife and son will arrive in this country and have the opportunity to live the so-called “American Dream.”

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“To immigrate to America with my loved ones is my ultimate dream,” Petras said, as he looked with awe at a golden California sunset blazing across San Pedro Bay, here where the Port of Long Beach, the second biggest port in North America, is located.

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At the same time, Petras is gripped by fear that all his life’s dream could vanish in an instant—if he ever gets to share the nightmarish fate that befell his fellow seafarer compatriots who were arrested last year, shackled in chains, detained without charges and summarily deported to their homeland by the now dreaded Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on alleged immigration violations.

The rash of ICE deportations involving Filipino seafarers has alarmed labor and human rights groups from New York, San Diego and Los Angeles, with some planning to sue President Donald Trump and his administration for targeting them just for being immigrants of color.

“To be branded a criminal alien is no joke. But we never had this kind of problem. We are the good guys,” Petras said, winking at his colleague Marvin de Castro, who, like him, just disembarked from their container ship Ever Mach, breezing through inspection by ICE agents without a hitch.

Power in maritime labor

Petras holds a C1/D nonimmigrant visa, usually issued to seafarers, and this is good for travel and entry to anywhere in the United States for a period of 10 years.

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The visas of scores of Filipino sailors deported by ICE were revoked for alleged possession of child pornography on their cell phones and computers. This threw them into legal limbo and possibly tainted their careers for life.

“If we follow the law and just do our job. I think we’ll be fine,” said Petras, a 2020 graduate of the Philippine Merchant Marine Academy in San Narciso, Zambales, the premier maritime school in the Philippines.

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“If you’re not looking for trouble, you’ve come to the right place,” said Pat Pettit, the motherly manager of the International Seafarers Center (ISC), a homely sanctuary for thousands of seafarers around the world who call on this port for a few days of rest and recreation while waiting for their next port of call.

On this Wednesday, Pettit, a 73-year-old grandmother who has endeared herself to thousands of Filipino sailors, picked up Petras and De Castro from their berth a few kilometers away so they could enjoy quality time inside the ISC, a humble-looking building shaped like a container vessel along Pico Avenue here.

“They are like my sons to me,” Pettit said, accepting the fact that Filipinos have become a global power in maritime labor, supplying the most number of seafarers in the world—one in every five, according to some estimates.

Chat with loved ones

The first Filipinos in America, in fact, were seafarers—the so-called “Indios Luzones,” mostly deck hands vital in the Galleon trade between the Spanish empire and the New World who arrived in 1587 at Morro Bay, some 300 kilometers north of here.

Before “jumping ship” became a word of dishonor for sailors abandoning ship to seek a better life elsewhere, the Indios Luzones were the original ship jumpers, according to historians.

“Not anymore, it is now illegal to jump ship. It is hard to immigrate legally to America if you jump ship,” said Jerry Milano, 58, a veteran seafarer who counsels new arrivals like Petras and De Castro.

Inside the ISC, Petras and De Castro joined a few compatriots who were busy with their cell phones and laptops, chatting with their loved ones, while a couple watched the World Cup soccer game between England and Croatia on a big-screen TV.

After helping himself with a cup of coffee, Petras immediately whipped out his new Macbook Pro, a Father’s Day gift from his 22-year-old wife, Darling Xiezhen Ava Alcober, a Tacloban native who is taking care of their 4-year-old son, Mark Lixin, back in Dagupan.

In his six years as a seafarer, he always felt lonely at sea and longed for the comfort of home—that opportunity few and far between.

“I never spent Father’s Day with my son,” said Petras, who admitted having experienced the same physical absence from his own father, Jorge, a 59-year-old sailor based in Lithuania.

“Me too,” chorused De Castro, a 35-year-old father to two children: 7-year-old daughter Lovelle and 2-year-old son Drave.

‘A special place’

Missing important dates in their loved ones’ lives is the price they pay for their absence while eking out a life of drudgery at sea.

But they send home the vital lifeline of money remittances that energize their country’s economy and, most important, keep their families out of poverty.

“I just bought my wife a 2025 Fortuner so that she can drive our son who is attending school for the first time in Dagupan,” said Petras, whose company, Manila-based Cargo Safeway Inc., pays him $5,400 a month (equivalent to P324,000 at P60 to one US dollar) for his job as a 3rd engineer at Singapore-flagged Ever Mach. The container ship transports a million tons of commercial products from Asia to the United States and Canada and vice versa.

It might look like a windfall for ordinary Filipinos back in their homeland. But Petras is still aiming for the bigger prize: a life in America.

His wife has started attending nursing school in the Philippines, preparing herself in the event they immigrate to the US.

Despite the current problems besetting America, Petras keeps thinking about the allure of this fabled but imperfect country.

His thoughts keep bringing him back to his most cherished memory: That of stepping on American soil for the first time, one sunny day in May 2022 at the nearby Port of Los Angeles, after he was quarantined interminably at sea by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“It was magical. America is really a special place. I will do everything to bring my family here,” Petras said. —CONTRIBUTED