As a first-generation immigrant from the Philippines, I can accurately assert that my family, to put it bluntly, was dirt poor. We lived in what was essentially a “bahay kubo” in the Ilocos Norte province, and my parents were both uneducated, relying on my dad’s mechanic job and my farmer worker grandparents in the United States. Upward mobility was a near impossible thing to achieve in a setting where everyone around us lived in squalor and severe lack of opportunities. That’s why, in 2001, my mom decided to leave her mother country and join her parents in California, leaving behind my father in the process.
It’s interesting how my story and many other Filipinx immigrant stories can be deemed as a sort of betrayal to the Philippines then the Philippines itself keeps failing at properly supporting its own people. As Vergara points out in his paper, Betrayal, Class Fantasies, and the Filipino Nation in Daly City, “...a significant number [of literature trying to convince Filipino people to stay] evoke some form of nationalistic service to the country…” (Vergara 143) This appeal to nationalism is deeply troublesome to the Filipino people, who’s socioeconomic backgrounds in a country with little opportunities may have encouraged to leave in the first place. They do not necessarily want to leave, but they are forced to to seek out better futures for themselves and their children.
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