In today's reading, the author, Benito M. Vergara Jr., brings up the topic of Filipino Americans versus Filipinos who stayed in the Philippines. The "betrayal" that Vergara focuses on in the reading, is based on how any Filipino who chooses to leave the Philippines in pursuit of either money or any self interests is in fact a traitor to the country as they do not hold their home country up as a priority. The issue, from Vergara's writing, seems to be a major issue to the nation's national image, as they see people who leave it to be unpatriotic to their homeland, and losing their Filipino-ness. I, for one, never thought about how Filipinos, or any other immigrants at that, to be seen as "defectors" to their country and that they would be seen as any less of their home country just because they left there in order to live a better life or to bring back extra money for the family.
Although the reasoning may seem plausible for the people who stayed back home, it may be because they haven't really thought about what it would really be like if they left their home country, how it would change their lives forever if they did. The movie portrayals of Filipinos visiting/moving to the United States always seem to have a bias placed on the negativity of living in the United States, despite its inaccuracies, it seems to have influenced a lot of patriotic Filipinos to never move or visit the United States in fear of losing their national identity. Prior to reading about this part about the biased movie portrayals, I never once thought about how it is a common theme among the Filipino movies that take place in the United States, to place such a negative tone to living in the United States even though living there is not as bad as the nationalist propaganda seems to be.
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