When Filipino-American priest Joy Tajonera arrived in Taichung in 2003, the first thing he did was to look for a safe space for migrant workers.
“One of the first things I did was to look for a place, because I know that the Filipinos don’t have a place of their own,” he said. “Having a safe in-door space where migrant workers can pray, attend Mass, relax, learn new skills and find sanctuary in times of distress meant that they won’t have to be on the streets on their days off.”
There were 714,291 migrant workers in Taiwan as of the end of September, with Filipinos being the third-largest group, behind Indonesians and Vietnamese, according to the Ministry of Labor.
As most of the migrant workers stay in dormitories provided by their employers or live with their employers, they are often left without a place to meet or socialize with friends.
Many spend time with friends in the foyers and plazas of train stations or public areas on their days off.
Tajonera was born in Manila in 1959 and earned a political science degree from the city’s Far Eastern University before emigrating to the US in 1982, where he helped provide counseling and vocational training to adults and worked as a social worker at Brooklyn Hospital in New York from 1985 to 1994.
He spent a year and a half in Taichung in 1998 teaching English before returning to the US to obtain a master of divinity degree in Chicago in 2001 and becoming a priest in New York the following year.
After being ordained as a priest, he asked his Maryknoll Catholic society to send him to Taichung to help migrant workers there. In 2004, he established the Ugnayan shelter in Tanzih District (潭子) to provide a safe haven for migrant workers.
The shelter has provided beds to about 1,000 people since it was established.
The people who ask for his help are usually Philippine workers who have lost their jobs or Philippine women separated from their Taiwanese husbands, Tajonera said.
Tajonera operates a church, a vocational training school and a shelter in the city. He receives funding and support from a number of sources, including Maryknoll, worshipers, the Manila Economic and Cultural Office and the local Taiwanese community.
“My Taiwanese neighbors would bring money and leave it on the staircase, because they know I feed a lot of people,” Tajonera said.
He does not ask big corporations for donations, because he feels if they really wanted to help they would have already done so instead of being asked or begged for it, he said, adding that he also does not receive funding from the government.
“Working with the migrants is a real joy. It is not a work in the sense of nine to five, but the mission to walk side by side with the migrants and Taiwanese,” he said.
He described his mission as “to pray and to give hope especially in difficult situations and to help when they need help [by offering] advice and sanctuary; to be the voice when they are voiceless; to give them courage and help them not to despair because of poverty, broken heart, problems at home, or working in difficult, dirty and dangerous jobs.”
A 51-year-old Filipina, identified only as Julianne, said she has been living at the shelter for about 10 years.
Julianne found herself with no place to stay when she was separated from her Taiwanese husband of 12 years.
She helps out at the shelter by preparing meals and is responsible for cooking lunch and dinner, she said.
“I have decided to keep staying here over the years, because I really enjoy the companionship and environment the shelter provides,” she said. “The people here are like my family.”
Another shelter resident, a 31-year-old Filipino identified only as Romar, said he was fired from his factory job about two months ago for smoking in a non-smoking area after receiving an earlier warning for a similar issue.
His dismissal meant he also had to leave the company dormitory, Romar said.
He is staying at the shelter while he waits to be transferred to another job, he said.
Even though a majority of people who seek help from Tajonera are Filipinos, the priest said he accepts and helps everyone regardless of ethnicity, adding that he refers migrant workers from other nationalities to shelters where the staff speak their language so that they can receive the support they need.
Tajonera said he does not put a limit on the number of people he is willing to help.
“The migrant worker becomes a commodity [in Taiwan], but that is not how we should treat people. We should treat people with dignity and respect, because all of us are the same, whether we are rich or poor, Christians or not, Taiwanese, immigrants or new immigrants,” he said.
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