My American Dream
By Karla Maquiling

AS A kid my greatest dream was to visit Central Park in New York and munch on bagels a la Lea Salonga in that “Miss Ko Na Kayo” commercial for the telecommunications firm Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company. I wanted to shop at Gap; dress up in long trench coats and boots, mittens and earmuffs; and hold snowflakes in my hand.

(Lea's comments years later that she barely hanged out at Central Park for fear of being mugged did not discourage me. I was determined to have my photo taken there.)

That was the extent of my American Dream.

“Wala kang mapapala pag mananatili ka sa Pilipinas (You won’t get rich in the Philippines),” a friend's uncle told me once. He had gone to the US as a nurse during the early eighties and came back a rich man.

During his homecoming last December, he showed his nephew pictures of his Jaguar and new house, which, he emphasized, he would never have been able to acquire had he stayed all his life in the Philippines.

But I was never convinced. There is no place like home, I told myself. There was no reason to move abroad as I have very few relatives outside the country, and most are not exactly close to my family. Furthermore, having been an Iskolar ng Bayan, I felt indebted to the nation's struggling heroes, the masses whose taxes had helped put me to school. The least I could do was work on Philippine soil and pay my taxes promptly since I couldn't be a politician or a lawyer.

I didn't think I was hiyang (now there’s another Lea Salonga buzzword, which means having adjusted to certain things, such as climate, cuisine, and—in Lea's earlier endorsements—shampoo) to foreign countries' climate, having lived all my life in the Philippines. I was freezing in the cold in Trinidad Valley; what more New York?

Furthermore, I had a journalism degree, I reminded myself. Stories of licensed Filipino doctors going to New York and ending up as butchers in kosher meat shops horrified me. “Sayang,” my Social Science professor shook her head. “Our parents didn’t send us to UP to end up as caregivers in Canada!” a friend exclaimed.

Several friends have moved abroad to seek their fortunes. An officemate gave up a successful career in public relations and moved to Canada. Three months after she got there, she e-mailed us to report that she had bought her own, albeit second-hand, car. Another officemate, a registered nurse, will be leaving for Orlando, Florida in October. A grade school classmate moved to California to live with her mother after six months of operating an internet shop in the Philippines, realizing that what she earned in the country for a year she would be getting in a week’s time as a cashier in the States.

Caregiver courses (costing P16–21,000 and spanning six months) have become the fad in the last two years, and almost every person I know is applying for an immigrant visa abroad—the one-way ticket to a good life. A few of my officemates are intent on moving to New Zealand, which welcomed its six millionth immigrant in March this year. Another option is Australia which recently announced that it is accepting 105,000 immigrants a year until 2006, of whom nurses get top priority as skilled migrants.

A few weeks ago, I woke up in cold sweat, worried that I wouldn’t be able to provide for my son’s education and needs if I continue to live as I do today— living from one payday to the next; no savings nor investments; no properties to my name. I imagined my creditors hounding me to my deathbed as I died a pauper, my son inheriting my debts.

And so I made a decision that was to change my life forever: I decided to seek employment abroad along with two college friends. It won’t be easy, we know, but we have high hopes of earning mucho dollars, sending money back home, saving some and eventually coming back to set up a business and live a more financially secure life.

For now, I’m saving every single peso that I can, for that trip to Somewhere out There, where my own dreams and those for my son’s—I hope—will come true.

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Karla, 24, is a single parent and a Lea Salonga wanna-be. After Miss Saigon closed in Broadway, she has decided to dream small. For now her ambition is to have her picture taken at Central Park. No more, no less.

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