PEOPLE POWWOW

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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Looking through the Filipino diaspora

AS a child in the 1950s, I always looked forward to a share of the goods in the monthly package shipped from New York City by Lolo Pete. He and two other brothers of my maternal grandmother had emigrated and worked there and were in the habit of mailing us chocolate, milk, canned goods, toys, candies and clothes.
Unlike some of my cousins, however, I never wished to replicate my grand dads’ foreign adventure. I just thought of earning good grades in school; and the future would take care of itself.
I was already a college sophomore in Manila when Lolo Pete and his wife came for a short vacation. He wanted to do something lasting for us but there was nothing I asked for. It was only my cousin Merla, a Medical Technology student at Centro Escolar University, who asked him to help her land a job in the United States after graduation.
Since then, Merla has become one of the ten million Filipinos who have gone abroad for “greener pastures.”  In fact, she has already retired and is now enjoying the fruits of her labor with her husband, children and grandchildren. They have no plans of coming home to the Philippines for good.
Many other cousins, nephews and nieces of mine spread out to other parts of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore.
My own son Norbert, a nurse, is in New York. If I were in his shoes, I would have worked there, too. The reason is because nurses in the Philippines are among the most exploited professionals; they are forced to “volunteer” without pay before they could be admitted for hospital employment.
Looking back, I realize why I intentionally chose to stay behind: I had hoped to play a role in nation building. It was a nation for which our heroes had fought and died in various struggles against the Spanish, the Japanese and the Americans. To escape to a foreign soil, I thought, would be tantamount to desertion.
I don’t think so, not anymore. There is no pure Filipino. Even our religion is foreign-influenced. We are a hybrid of sorts resulting from a combination of cultures.
The world has become so small – 12 hours by plane to the other side – that anybody can claim to be a citizen of the world. Anybody can talk and write to anybody anywhere in real time through the Internet and be a “netizen.” The world has become borderless, where no individual can claim to be purely from where he is now.
On each square meter in the world stand people of different ethnicities and identities. Therefore, each square meter is a microcosm of the world.
And so the Filipino diaspora or dispersal of Philippine populations is an understandable destiny of a people trying to make both ends meet through skills that fit and fill the labor market abroad.
By sending home half or part of their money as allotment to family, our borderless workers enable their kids to study in the best local schools. In effect, these absentee parents and their home-grown children make our country a richer haven for future generations.
Whether these new kids chose to work here or there hardly matters. Here and there now make up just one small world./PN
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