Welcome Home

The Embassy clerk slid our brown passports -- imprinted with the gilded seal of the Republic -- across the counter. He shook his head: “Sorry, I cannot give you visas. Why?... because you are Filipinos, and you have the worst passport in the world!”

August 1988. It was our first trip to Europe. We were beyond excited. My wife Lucie and I had immigrated to the United States in 1976, two years after graduating from medical school, two months after our wedding in Baguio. Actually, Lucie could not travel with me to New York until Thanksgiving, five months later. The U.S. Embassy in Manila had declined to grant her a dependent visa on the basis that she was a physician. But that is another story.

For years, we pursued postgraduate training on paper-thin ground – me with a J-1 student visa; Lucie with an H working visa. After a series of extensions, petitions, and queuing in line at the immigration office in Manhattan -- at 4 or 5 AM in the bitter cold of midwinter -- just to get a number to secure an interview, we had gotten used to the idea of being inconsequential droplets in the rising wave of the Filipino Diaspora.

I recall driving to Manhattan from Long Island before daybreak, waiting for hours in zero degree weather outside the immigration building, intermittently rubbing my hands together and blowing warm air into them to prevent frostbite. Finally, at seven thirty the line would move. Like shackled prisoners, we shuffled forward. However, when we reached the door, the security officer would hold up a hand to say: “That’s it, folks. That’s all the applications we can handle. We will be open at eight tomorrow. Better luck next time. Have a nice day!”

After years of such tribulations, Lucie and I received our “green cards”, which were not green but white. Soon thereafter, we would be eligible to apply for US citizenship. Yet we postponed our application, wanting to hold on to Filipino citizenship as long as possible, treasuring the last official document that linked us to the motherland.

Thereafter, the opportunity came to visit Europe; to visit the Marian shrines of Lourdes and Fatima; to visit Rome, the seat of Christendom and the Holy Land, where Jesus Christ had walked this earth. It was a dream come true. Most countries in our itinerary did not require visas for US citizens. But, being United States “resident aliens” bearing Philippine passports, we were directed by the travel agency to secure visas from the various embassies and consulates in Los Angeles.

Each foreign office had different rules and protocol. Some issued visas in a day or two. Other diplomatic offices directed us to leave our passports and related documents with them for a week for the required processing. Thus, it took several early morning trips to Los Angeles from San Diego to obtain visas from the Portuguese, Spanish, French, and other embassies. In the end, we got everything done except for the Italian visa which the embassy recommended we obtain upon our arrival in Europe.

Easier said than done. When we arrived in Lisbon, the Italian embassy there balked. The embassy official said the proper procedure was for us to return to the United States and apply for visas in Los Angeles. He understood that we had just gotten off the plane after an eleven-hour transatlantic flight. However, rules were rules. The correct procedure was to catch a flight back to Los Angeles, present our papers at the Italian embassy there, get our visas, and then rejoin our group in Europe.

That was the only solution, he said. The basic problem was we were Filipinos. “Simply put”, he explained, “you have the worst passport in the world! Filipinos visit Rome and they never leave!”

We were just touring Europe and the Vatican Museum would surely be a treat but we had no plans to abandon the United States, we assured him. No, the embassy clerk did not think that was a good enough guarantee to allow us to enter Italy. I asked to see the Ambassador. The stubborn clerked refused. We stood our ground. Finally, at the end of a very long day, we got our passports stamped with the necessary visa.

The travails of traveling to Europe recurred upon returning to the United States. Customs and immigration officials in New York wanted to know how long we had been away, which countries we had visited. Did we purchase anything contraband?

It was the same story after every trip back from the Philippines. Were we bringing in forbidden delicacies? Did we stack balut in our bags? Were we smuggling chorizo, adobo, dried fish?

A wonderful Philippine vacation inevitably ended up in grueling interrogations at the port of entry, triggering delays at customs, and rushing for connecting flights. Being tagged an unwanted if tolerated segment of American society was downright humiliating.

What did the late mayor Tom Bradley say at a Filipino convention? “If Filipino nurses and doctors in California decided not to get out of bed in the morning, the entire California hospital system would collapse”. We faithfully got out of bed each morning. Yet, society took our substantial contributions for granted.

International travel being in our future plans, we finally applied for US citizenship. We lined up at the federal building in San Diego to take the test. The official seemed surprised that I knew grass was green, the sky blue, and that I could spell and make a complete sentence. He was also surprised that the amendments to the Bill of Rights, and other stuff Americana, were not alien to me.

The day of our swearing in as new citizens came. We pledged allegiance to the US flag and everything it stood for. It was a happy day but I also felt like I had abandoned the country of my birth.

My father assured me I was still a Filipino; nothing essential had changed. Years later I found comfort in what Fr. Thomas Green, a Jesuit teacher in Ateneo, wrote about himself. After 30 years in Manila, he no longer felt like a New Yorker. But neither could he claim to be Filipino. For better or worse, he had become part of a third culture – half Filipino, half American.

The next European trip was a breeze. We had exchanged our brown Philippine passports with blue US. We were not peppered with questions at ports of entry. Nobody bothered to stop us in Geneva, Frankfurt or Cairo. As American pilgrims, we passed unhindered through Rome and Jerusalem.

After a long intercontinental flight, we arrived at customs and immigration in New York. Weary and tired, I braced myself for another long interview. Would we have time to catch the connecting flight to San Diego?

The customs official scanned our blue passports. I was prepared with rehearsed answers. Instead of inquiring how long we had been away or if we had adobo hidden in our suitcases, the official asked: Did you have a nice trip? We said yes.

“Welcome home,” he smiled.