IN FRATERNAM MEAM: TO ALL CONCERNED FILIPINOS

IN FRATERNAM MEAM

Friday, May 28, 2004

TO ALL CONCERNED FILIPINOS

Note: this was forwarded to me by a friend. told me to let it be posted in my blog to be read, if my blogspot is being read, by pinoys abroad. to understand this reponse, please read:

http://www.inq7.net
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here's the response to the article that is attacking pinoys as "SELLOUT".

We resent you calling Filipino who chooses to stake his own futurein a foreign land as a "sellout". how easy it is for you to say that, you in your comfortable office cubicle! have you ever gone to a foreign land to work as an entry-level employee, struggling upwards against an oh-so-subtle but evr-present current of discrimination as a "second-class citizen"? have you ever worked 12 long hours on your feet, answering to the needs and demands of multilingual, multicultural patients, only to come home to have to cook your own meals, do your own laundry, throw your own garbage before you throw your tired, aching body to bead and wake up 5 or 6 hours later to put in another long day at work?

Have you ever fought, loneliness, homesickness, and despair all at once, and then have to present a brave voice to the people back home: "yes, Mama, I'm all right here. the pay is good, Papa. opo, i will send $300 on my next payday so you can go to the doctor to have your heart checked and buy your medicines. ingat po kayo". and then burst to tears when you put down the phone, the loneliness gripping your heart so tight you almost can't breathe, wishing you were back home. but a ticket back home will you another $900.00.... better to send it home so that your parents can pay for the doctor, your pamangkins can go to school, your aging lolo can buy his medicine. Inq7 editorial staff, have YOU ever done that?

No, perhaps you with your "katulongs" at home , surrounded by parents who pamper you (whome you take mostly for granted), with your own secret sense of arrogance (yes- arrogance!) that you work in a major newspaper and are better than the masa andmiddle-class lot who have to FIND work abroad- you have never been in our shoes and you will not understand the battles we fought to get here, stay alive here. you donot understand, donot een TRY, and that is why you judge us. you- with your overworked maids, your university education, your comfotable 15-30 paycheck, your big shot arrogance- you are hypocrites.

Do you think this person you are judging, or like him, have not fought to stay in our country. if only we saw that staying would assure us of a good future for ourselves and our families? do you really ignorantly believe that just because a person is young and smart, that his life is "unencumbered by challenge", as you put it so euphemistically? do you not know that our parents sacrficed and scraped together their own meager salaries to send us to school, only to find us, after graduation, working for years in measly - paying jobs in hospitals, getting paid as little as P3,000.00 a month, barely enough to cover our "pamasahe" to and from work?

do you really think millions of unemployed or underemployed hungry young doctors and nurses langushing in poverty will be good for the country's economy and future?

When there was a glut in our professions and the lcoal hospitals tunred us away or asked us to work as "volunteers"(walang bayad), do you thin we sat on our behinds and waited for someone to give us handouts?NO! we pounded the pavements applying for work as hotel clerks, salespeople, telemarketers,anything, so we can put food in our stomach and clothes on our backs and maybe give a little something to our parents and siblings. and when we finally landed a non-medical job, we had to repeatedly answer questions like "O, nurse/doctor ka pala, bakit dito ka nagtatrabaho?anong ginagawa mo dito"? but we bore that in silence, in humility even, because the alternative- inertia, despair, poverty - were unacceptable to us. but perhaps you do understand this either, as you most probably got your job straight our of university, using your family's connections.

And have YOU ever voluntered on medical missions, unpaid but willing and ABLE, like many of us have before we left the country? most likely not, because it is easier to judge and write about it, thanactually DO SOMETHING GOOD.

And yet, are you with one side of your "doble-kara" going to judge and condemn us, brand us as "sellouts" and with the other side praise us and than us for send $7 BILLION ANNUALLY back home in remittances? and, me i point out that you write that haughty, arrogant editorial, even the very ADS in your website TARGET te very people whom you so arrogantly deismiss as "sellouts", hoy, mga IGNORANTENG HIPOKRITO dyan sa Inq7, mahiya naman kayo.!

You have deeply, deeply insulted us overseas Filipinos by branding us someone who wants to wrok abroad as a "sellout"but despite this, we will continue working, continue fighting, continue sending money home so that our families can have better lives, andour children, siblings, and even ralative to the nth degress can have better education and better futurs. someday we hope to come back home to our beloved Philippijes, to start businesses, open schools, create jobs for our fellow Filipos - all with our hard earned money. even then, we will continue to shore up the economy of the county, foght for its future the best we can. we wonder if, your comfortable room in your comfortable houses,when you look inside your judgemental soul (IF YOU EVER DO), you can say that for yourselves. that about that.

Even when our country has not been very good to us, we still help put families back home. even when our countrymen, kababayan kuno, call us "sellouts", we still send our hard end money to families who appreciates us. evenwhen you insult us we still try to find out what is going on the Philippines (see we read Inq7, ABS-CBN.COM and your Philstar.com and we wathc the Filipino channel and we know what you're yammering about when you think we're notlooking) andsee how we can help our country somehow, by helping our families.

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PLEASE FORWARD THISM TO TO OTHER CONCERNED OVERSEAS FILIPINOS, AND LET INQ7.NET BE AWARE THAT WE DONTO APPRECIATE THIS INSULT AND WE WILL NOT LET IT PASS.
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posted by infraternam meam @ 1:56 AM

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