grasp the structural limitations of migration's potential contribution to sustainable development and in downplaying the practical limitations of the State in protecting excessively large numbers of migrants dispersed abroad. Migration is no substitute for polices fostering real production by the domestic economy over the long term. At the same time, while migration odcurs on such ahrge scale the state is obliged to take responsibility for its millions of citizens forced to go abroad. Philippine migration policy is disproportionately focused on maximizing the overall inflow of remittances as a development goal in itself without weighing this against the welfare of migrant workers and their families. The government has for many years now been aggressive in crafting programs and services aimed at facilitating and encouraging migration. While acknowledging the many social costs these are effectively downplayed and the resoluteness ofthe labor export effort.often creates the impression that migration is unequivocally beneficial for the migrants and their families. This is particularly done by overstating supposed development benefits for the economy and the income benefits for households. Migration has relatively immediate and visible quantitative benefits while its significant costs are more qualitative (ex. social costs) or otherwise difficult to quantifu (ex. lost economic potential). The economic compulsion for the govemment to keep exporting Filipinos especially to maintain or especially to increase remittances unfortunately appears overriding and precludes undertaking any measures that, directly or indirectly, would constrict the flow of migration. This is even if such measures would immediately and in the long-run go far in lessening the incidence of abuses and migrant rights violations. Even lvorse is that pursuit of a cheap labor policy could encourage a'race to the bottom' with the government effectively competing with other labor exporting countries in giving the cheapest and most docile labor to potential employers. In the context of a labor export policy there is then an underlying conflict between the government as promoter/recruiter of migration in pursuit of overall macroeconomic ends and the government as monitor/protector of migrant rights and welfare which can move in different directions. This goes far in explaining for instance why many migrants in distress are prompted even by Philippine embassies and consulates to essentially concede the violations of their rights by employers. Especially in the short-term, there are certainly practical and political limits to asserting even universal labor rights given inter-country differences nlegaV 41