{"id":214,"date":"2006-10-30T07:26:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-30T13:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/?p=214"},"modified":"2006-10-30T07:26:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-30T13:26:00","slug":"the-day-i-set-foot-out-of-my-house-to-leave-the-ph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/2006\/10\/30\/the-day-i-set-foot-out-of-my-house-to-leave-the-ph","title":{"rendered":"The day I set foot out of my house to leave the Ph&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The day I set foot out of my house to leave the Philippines and move to the States, I knew that this day would eventually come.  It&#8217;s been 8 years since then, but it still doesn&#8217;t make it any less significant.  Yes, I&#8217;m finally eligible to apply for US citizenship.  What does that really mean though?  Ibig ba sabihin non puputi na ako?  Does it mean that I&#8217;m turning my back on the Philippines?  The subject of immigration by Pinoys has been beaten to death by a lot of Pinoy bloggers (including an excellent post on it by the great Jim Paredes on his <a href=\"http:\/\/haringliwanag.pansitan.net\/\">site<\/a>), but for me, it is simply a formality.  I&#8217;ve lived in the States for about 8-9 now, and I don&#8217;t have any plans of leaving, so why not reap the benefits of being a citizen?   I&#8217;ll have a blue passport, have social security benefits (or what will be left of it when it comes time for me and Aileen to retire), and be able to petition my relatives from the Philippines to live here.  <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll always love the Philippines, and will always be proud of being Pinoy.  Becoming a US citizen doesn&#8217;t change that.  I don&#8217;t even have to renounce being a Filipino citizen.  As they say, there&#8217;s no place like home, and I feel that I will always consider the Philippines my home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The day I set foot out of my house to leave the Philippines and move to the States, I knew that this day would eventually come. It&#8217;s been 8 years since then, but it still doesn&#8217;t make it any less significant. Yes, I&#8217;m finally eligible to apply for US citizenship. What does that really mean [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}