Biden’s fist bump and Filipinos with family in Saudi

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman fist bumps U.S. President Joe Biden upon his arrival at Al Salman Palace, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, July 15, 2022. Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS

Like many Filipinos, U.S. President Joe Biden is a good Catholic. So was that a “fist bump of penance” Biden gave Mohammed Bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia?

I paid $6 bucks for gas in California this weekend. But I’m still not ready to embrace the “fist bump for gas pumps” photo op quite yet.

Not if you have any Filipino blood running through your veins.

As a Filipino American, I know how lucky I am to be born here in the U.S. My father was allowed to enter freely 94 years ago. Of course, he was colonized. But subsequent generations in my family in the Philippines have not been even that fortunate.

A few have been part of the Filipino diaspora to Saudi Arabia,  not the U.S., leaving for jobs, both high and low, in order to send money back to families in the Philippines.

How many and how much? The 938,490 overseas Filipinos in Saudi Arabia sent $1.84 billion back to the Philippines in 2021.

After the U.S., Saudi Arabia is the second largest hirer of overseas Filipino workers and has the largest Filipino population in the Middle East.

So when you can’t make a living in the Philippines and the U.S. isn’t in the cards (green or otherwise), the American dream to Filipinos becomes the Saudi Arabian “dream.”

But what a dream, to find yourself going from a poor country to a rich one that is antithetical to everything you would want in a dream land.

According to groups like Migrante that work with overseas Filipinos in Saudi Arabia, workers there are routinely mistreated by employers through unfair labor practices or made victims of sexual abuse.

Being a Filipino worker may be worse than being a woman or an LGBTQ person in Saudi Arabia. They have few to zero rights in that country.

All of them, however, are better off than Jamal Khashoggi, the late Washington Post columnist, who in 2018 went in to take a meeting with the Crown Prince and never came out alive.

The murder of Khashoggi was the reason Biden despised MBS as a “pariah,” in the first place, and we all took Biden at his word. If America is the exemplar of moral leadership, what the leader of the free world says has impact.

But pariahs with oil reserves don’t stay pariahs long.

Biden’s news conference last Friday was telling. After going on about a litany of economic gains like opening up Saudi to Israeli air space, Biden got to the issue of human rights and Khashoggi.

“I raised it at the top of the meeting making it clear what I thought at the time, and what I think of it now,” Biden said.

But I doubt he called MBS the “p” word.

Crown Prince Pariah.

When pressed by the media about how the prince replied, Biden said, “He basically said that he was not personally responsible for it. I indicated he probably was.”

“It” being the murder of Khashoggi. But it was the shortest of shorthand, too unsatisfying even to call it “pushback.”

Graceless grace? And what did Americans get in exchange for the meeting and the photo op?  Don’t expect relief from 9.1 percent inflation and high prices at the gas pumps.

“I suspect you won’t see that for another couple of weeks,” Biden said, indicating we’d see a bigger drop in gas prices when gas stations lower their prices consistent to what they’re paying. Really? Oil companies giving up profits to help consumers? Don’t hold your breath.

One was maybe hoping for greater concessions on human rights?  Maybe a promise of greater freedoms for women? LGBTQ? Journalists? Nope. None of that.

But it was different for the prince, his pariahness.

He got to drop that moniker–and show the world that Biden gave him that U.S. fist bump of penance. It was just tough to see if you’re an American, who believes in human rights and in a free and uncensored journalism.

Tougher too for those who know the Asian journey to the Middle East and how Asians there who are forced to make do with their Saudi Arabian dream.

When the moral leader of governance and the free world fist bumps a bully, hearts sink all over.

Filipinos should be used to this from history.

Remember how Reagan and Bush kept propping up Marcos during martial law? Who can forget then Vice President Bush praising Marcos June 30, 1981 for his “adherence to democratic principles and to the democratic processes.”

And all said with zero sarcasm. But the numbers don’t lie. Amnesty International says Marcos imprisoned 70,000 people during martial law, tortured 34,000, and killed 3,240 Filipinos.

And of course, there was Marcos rival Sen. Benigno Aquino assassinated upon returning to the Philippines.

Even with all that, America consistently stuck by Marcos to the end, and even gave him exile.

So to see MBS, in spite of Khashoggi’s death, get Biden’s fist bump of penance was a bit of a jolt. We expected more out of Biden, simply because we believed he was a better human being than other recent U.S. presidents.

Now he’s running out of time to show us he’s much different at all.

Emil Guillermo is a veteran journalist and commentary. He writes a column for the Inquirer.net.

NOTE: I will talk about this column and other matters on “Emil Amok’s Takeout,” my AAPI micro-talk show. Live @2p Pacific. Livestream on Facebook; my YouTube channel; and Twitter. Catch the recordings on www.amok.com.