Above: A portion of Hong Kong at night as seen from Victoria Peak. More than 400,000 migrant domestic workers live in Hong Kong, about five percent of the total population. They cook and clean and care for children, pets, and the elderly. They also at times endure horrible treatment.
A United Methodist pastor from the Philippines and a deaconess from the U.S. work to empower migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong. The migrants are mostly women who often face difficult challenges in both their workplace and their relationship to families back home.
Jan. 27, 2025 | HONG KONG (UM News)
When Narcisa Basilio was fired in October from her job as a domestic servant in Hong Kong, she wasn’t given any notice. She was simply told to leave.
“I packed my bags and took the elevator to the lobby. I didn’t know what to do. It was evening, and I had no money for a boarding house or food. So, I just sat there,” she said.
Basilio overheard a couple speaking in Tagalog, the language of the Philippines, her homeland. They were in line at a McDonald’s in the building lobby. The couple noticed her looking at them, her bags at her feet, so the woman approached Basilio and asked if she needed help.
“I told her what had happened, and she asked me if I had a place to go. I said no. She told me about a place called Bethune House. Her husband made a phone call, and then they took me on the MTR (the subway) to a station, where we met a woman who took me to the shelter. I’m so lucky I met them,” she said.
It wasn’t just luck. The Rev. Israel Bangsil is a United Methodist pastor from the Northwest Philippines Conference appointed to the Methodist International Church in Hong Kong. His ministry focuses on responding to the needs of migrant workers like Basilio. As most of the migrants are women, Bangsil’s wife, Josie, is often involved. It was Israel and Josie Bangsil who helped Basilio.
Staying in Bethune House for a week, Basilio said the support she received in the shelter helped her recover from the trauma of being fired abruptly. She said that while finding a new job was important, she wouldn’t mind going back to the Philippines, where her 12-year-old son lives with her mother-in-law. “I talk to him every day on Messenger, but that’s an impossible way to be a parent,” she said.
With the money she sends home every month, her husband built a modest house and bought a small rice field, but she doesn’t know if they could survive without her income from Hong Kong. “It’s hard to pay school fees for my son, let alone have enough food for the family on the salaries they pay in the Philippines,” Basilio said.
According to Bangsil, encounters with terminated workers like Basilio have been a common experience during the two years he has served in Hong Kong. Although his church schedule is filled with meetings and worship services in Tagalog and Ilocano, interruptions take precedence.
“Josie and I are essentially on call, so every time there is a domestic worker who has been terminated by her employer, we make ourselves available. Whenever they need us, we’ll cancel any meetings in order to be there,” he said.
Melba Manzano, a Filipina migrant worker who spends Saturdays — her one day off each week — at Bangsil’s church, said workers can count on the pastor and his wife.
“If they get a phone call that someone has been terminated, they stop what they’re doing and go attend to the sister. The worker could call her friends, but they’re working and can’t get away. So, they call the pastor and Josie, and they find them and their luggage in the middle of the road,” said Manzano, who has worked in Hong Kong for 19 years.
Bangsil collaborates extensively with two United Methodist-supported agencies in the city. Bethune House, which provides emergency shelter to migrants, has long been supported by United Women in Faith. The Mission For Migrant Workers, an ecumenical effort to help with legal and other problems, gets support from the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.
The two agencies often work closely together. In Basilio’s case, for example, while she stayed at Bethune House, the Mission helped her navigate the legal ramifications of her sudden termination and start the process of finding a new job. In Hong Kong, a migrant worker without a job for two weeks can be deported.
Hong Kong hosts some 400,000 migrant domestic workers, about 5% of the population. Slightly more than half come from the Philippines. Every day, they cook, clean and care for children, pets and older adults. They are required to live in the home of the family that hires them, even though that often means sleeping in a hallway or cupboard.
Bangsil considers migrant workers to be “modern slaves” who have become a commodity in the international economy.
“Becoming a domestic worker here is a forced choice. People don’t want to leave their families back in the Philippines. If there were employment there, they wouldn’t come here,” Bangsil said.
“I hear constantly from the women about the difficulties they face, the lack of food and privacy in the workplace, the outright abuse that some of them suffer. At Christmastime, when their families back home in the Philippines are celebrating with lechon (roasted pork), bought with the migrants’ salaries, their food here is meager and their celebration simple and often lonely. But they won’t post about that on social media, as they try to hide their real situation from their families back home.”
Bangsil said the women’s faith “helps them to hold on and survive whatever challenges they face here.” He said the church he serves provides a safe space “where they can cry and share their burdens.”
Another person to whom migrant workers in Hong Kong often turn is Joy Prim, a United Methodist deaconess who coordinates training programs and volunteer work for the Mission For Migrant Workers. Originally from North Carolina, she speaks fluent Tagalog.
Prim said a key to effective mission is the ability to listen.
“A lot of what we do at the Mission is listen to the migrants, listen to their needs so we can adjust our services. During the pandemic, for example, all the schools went online, so many domestic workers became teachers in the homes where they worked. But some didn’t know how to use computers or didn’t understand online security. We hurriedly provided training so they could keep the children and the elderly in their care from being scammed,” Prim said.
“Too often in the church we assume we know what people need. By listening and then responding, we can better meet their actual needs and show that Christians know how to listen.”
Prim first came to Hong Kong in 2011 as a young adult mission intern. When she was accepted into the Global Ministries program, she was so convinced she’d be assigned to Africa that she started learning Swahili.
“When they told me I would be going to Hong Kong, I had to use Google to find out where it was,” she said.
Assigned to the Mission For Migrant Workers, where she heard story after story of abuse of migrant workers, Prim said she wondered why the number of Filipina workers in Hong Kong was so high. She decided to start spending her Sundays with migrant partner organizations, sitting along Chater Road, where Filipina migrants gather on their day off.
“That’s where I listened to the migrants themselves, learning about the overall situation in the Philippines and how the Philippines government forced migrants to go overseas. I learned about the human rights crisis there and the role of the United States in equipping the government with billions of dollars in weapons,” Prim said.
When she returned to the U.S., Prim became an active participant in groups supporting human rights and democracy in the Philippines. Since her return to Hong Kong in 2020 as a United Methodist missionary, again assigned to the Mission For Migrant Workers, she has continued that work.
“Here I’ve learned the true meaning of solidarity. It’s not a noun like we throw around in the States but, rather, a verb, a daily choice to wake up and to fight for each other’s rights, hand in hand, arm in arm, following Jesus to the margins where the widows and orphans and migrants live. We’re called to support the ways that God is already working among them, rather than constantly thinking we have to come in and solve their problems for them,” Prim said.
While the Mission directly assists thousands of migrants each year, Prim said it encourages the workers to use their own unions and associations to push for better working conditions, fair wages and just treatment.
Lia Quirante is a migrant domestic worker in Hong Kong who’s pushing for change.
She talks every day on Messenger with her 11-year-old daughter back home in the Philippines. “I won’t sleep at night until I’ve checked her homework assignment and we’ve talked about how things are going in school. I’m as hands-on as I can be as a virtual mom,” she said.
Quirante came to Hong Kong eight years ago because working as a domestic servant earned her three times more than what she’d made as a schoolteacher in the Philippines. She’d also run up crippling medical debt when her daughter was hospitalized. In 2019, she quit her job because of abuse and ended up staying in a Bethune House shelter. There she listened to the experiences of other women who’d survived experiences much worse than her own.
“If they couldn’t speak up on their own behalf, if they weren’t able to demand that their rights be respected, then I realized that nothing would change unless I would speak up for them. That’s why I became a migrant leader,” said Quirante, who in 2023 was elected secretary-general of United Filipinos in Hong Kong during its convention held in the Methodist International Church.
When she’s not folding laundry or caring for her employer’s child, Quirante is lobbying the government for better working conditions, including requiring a living wage for migrants rather than the current minimum wage.
She said Bangsil and Prim are essential allies in their struggle.
“They’re not trying to solve our problems for us, but rather empowering us, helping us fight for our own rights. As such, they are more than friends. They have become part of our family. They provide us with emotional and spiritual support to keep fighting,” Quirante said.
The Rev. Paul Jeffrey is a freelance photojournalist who lives in Oregon. A former United Methodist missionary, he is a founder of Life on Earth Pictures.
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