Give Equal Rights and Watch How Many Lives Are Changed Forever By Floribelle C.

I have been a domestic worker since April 2008. More than seventeen years. That is not a brief stint or a temporary arrangement. It is a career, a sustained commitment, a lifetime of work given to families who have relied on my skill and presence to keep their homes running. I begin each morning at half past seven, and I bring to every day the quiet steadiness that comes from knowing this work deeply.

My family is my reason. On the hardest days, it is the thought of my children's future that carries me through. I am completely hopeful that things will improve for domestic workers, holding my belief at the highest possible level even after nearly two decades in a system that has repeatedly fallen short of what it should be. That hopefulness is not ignorance of the challenges. It is a deliberate choice, made by someone who understands the cost of giving up.

What I want the world to understand comes in three clear words: give equal rights. Not special treatment. Not extra consideration. Equal rights. The same protections, the same legal standing, and the same basic respect that any worker in any other field would expect as a matter of course. The simplicity of that request is what makes it so compelling. I am not asking for more. I am asking for the same.

I spend fifteen hours each week worrying about my job and visa situation, a number that reveals the full weight of legal uncertainty on a person who has given almost two decades to this work. Fifteen hours of worry every week is fifteen hours not spent resting, not spent with family, not spent living freely. It is a cost I pay quietly and invisibly, as a worker whose contributions to society are equally invisible to those who make policy.

The right I identify as most urgently needed is the right to renew the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa. I give that urgency the highest possible rating. Without visa renewal, I have no guarantee of continuity despite seventeen years of experience. The contribution of those years is not rewarded with stability. It is rewarded with the same uncertainty faced by someone just starting out, which is profoundly unjust.

I consider the right to renew the ODW Visa, the right to settlement, and the path to citizenship as life-changing. Not just important. Life-changing. These are rights that would alter the fundamental shape of my life, replacing uncertainty with stability, anxiety with peace, and a constant background fear with genuine confidence.

The government, in my assessment, is doing the very least to protect migrant domestic workers. Workers must speak up. Advocates and NGOs must raise awareness. Governments must make laws.

If these rights were restored, it would mean having a free and independent way of life. That phrase captures something essential. Freedom is not just the absence of restrictions. It is the presence of genuine options. The ability to choose. The ability to plan. The ability to move through the world without every decision being shadowed by legal vulnerability.

VODW fights for that freedom. My seventeen years of dedication are both a testament to what domestic workers give and a reminder of how much we are still owed.

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