To migrate or not
Even among close relatives and friends of our clan, few people are aware that my mother was set to migrate to the United States in the 1960s.
The US had loosened immigration rules for many countries, including the Philippines, especially for much-needed professionals. The exodus of doctors and nurses is well-known, the Philippines being a top “exporter.”
But there were many openings for other professions, and my mother seemed to fit in those categories. She had degrees in home economics and education and taught for more than 10 years in local schools at the primary and secondary levels.
She went on to take library science, a rather forward-looking move as she recognized the demand for people in what we call information sciences today. Many years later, I found her papers showing how prepared she was to migrate, including letters of acceptance from several schools needing librarians.
One morning, while my sister and I were still asleep, she quietly left the house and was brought to the airport by our driver. She left a note for my sister and me, the letter apologizing for leaving and explaining she did not feel she would be strong enough to say goodbye, but explaining she had to do this for our future and promising to return soon to take us with her.
It turned out, though, that she was leaving as well for a long overdue medical checkup, and the doctors in a hospital in New York eventually diagnosed her with gastrointestinal cancer, and that there was a chance, the doctors said, if she’d had surgery. She survived with a prognosis that she could live another five years.
She survived another 50 years, living to nearly a hundred, but gone were her dreams of migrating. Back home, our family would sometimes mention those “nearly migrated” plans. No regrets, though—it seemed she had found a way to rationalize not being able to migrate, the most common being that we needed her more with us in the Philippines.
Curiously, she would also talk about maybe it was better not to have migrated because the US was not a good place to live, as she shared many stories of friends and relatives who did migrate, but seemed to regret it, mentioning high crime rates, the expensive cost of living (what politicians now call “affordability”), and “bad morals,” which included a lot of “wrong values,” and I ended up as an advocate for the Philippines: women’s rights, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights, ecumenism, and more.
Even more curiously, as she became a senior citizen, she took another turn in her worldviews and threw her support behind all these “liberal American ideas,” especially on gender, admitting many times that she had read the stuff I wrote and had agreed with many of the “strange” American values that had emerged. She was happy about my work and would mention that maybe I would have found a better fit if I had migrated. Americans, she said, had a better sense of fairness.
I’ve wondered how she would react if she were alive today to see America. I suspect she would advise parents not to allow their children to migrate to the US, citing the violence against people of color and people who were simply different. We did have many relatives who migrated to the US, coming home to visit, especially during the holidays, and after each of these reunions, my mother would give one of those loaded statements: “Robert (I changed the name of a cousin) seems quite happy with his good friend Ken … they’ve been together for years,” avoiding terms like partner or even spouse.
There seems to be more acceptance now of changing values, a changing America, a changing world. Perhaps we’re seeing this changing world for the better, despite all the pain that accompanies the changes.
I think it’s helped that more Filipinos working in the US and, more so, from Canada, are sending home stories of goodwill.
We thus see the paradoxes of racial and ethnic diversity, while causing often acrimonious debates, actually creating a better understanding of “the other” Americans, of the “other” America.
I did end up living in the US as a student for many years, and my sister migrated permanently. My parents continue to hope I’ll migrate, and I’ll answer, yes, it’d be nice to visit, but not migrate. Trump gives reason(s) not to go.
In these Trumpian times, I wonder if even short periods of living in the US would be learning experiences. But it’s hard these days to read news from the US, which is depressing and sometimes infuriating.
And when my children sometimes talk about applying to study there, I quickly suggest, “Let’s look at Canada or Europe instead, and hey, there’s Hong Kong and Singapore, Japan, or Korea.”
And why not the Philippines and life at home?
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michael.tan@inquirer.net
