A long-term study following an extended Filipino clan from their home nation to the Middle East and the US as members of two generations decide whether and how to find work abroad to support themselves and their families. This was clearly a career-spanning project for the author, and it is evident how he built trust with the book's subjects. As a result, this is an impressive and unvarnished take on the opportunities and the challenges that have defined the Philippines for decades now. I do wish that there had been a bit more balance in presenting how DeParle's subjects view their ethnographer, to ground the experience a bit more. ( )

When we discuss migration in the U.S., we mostly refer to those who enter at the southern border. This book of investigative journalism is a family saga of migration from the Philippines told through three generations. I don’t know a lot about the Philippines and want to learn more. The country seems to be in the epicenter of the world’s cultural regions; it’s situated in what I think of as Asia, is heavily influenced by Spanish, Mexican, and Latin colonization, and workers migrate to the nearby Middle East, as well as halfway across the world to the United States. The economy is bolstered by overseas migrant workers who send home remittances. I still have so many questions and curiosities about this country. ( )

What an amazing story. For my taste, it started a little slow—why should I care to know all these details about these people? I wondered. But soon I was drawn in. DeParle organizes the book very well. He rotates between a number of characters, but not so many that it is confusing, and he intersperses fascinating and relatively unbiased discussions of history and policy (nothing is black and white). By itself, this discussion might have been dry, but DeParle humanizes it masterfully.

> Before long, Thailand, which was much poorer in the 1950s, would have per capita income nearly three times as high. Gains in agricultural productivity had powered development in other Asian nations but eluded the Philippines, where landowners still ruled vast estates. With land and labor in equal abundance, the barons saw no need to innovate.

> Marcos gave the process a shove. In a 1974 May Day speech, he warned that the country simply had too many workers and not enough work. His solution was to ship the workers abroad—to "undertake the systematic employment of Filipinos overseas" and "optimize the national benefits therefrom in the form of dollar remittances."

> Nearly half a million West Indians followed over the next two decades—bus drivers, porters, factory workers, orderlies—and even more came from the Indian subcontinent. As citizens of the Commonwealth, migrants from the former colonies could move to Britain as they pleased. That freedom ended in 1962, but the movement did not, since British reunification laws let migrants send for their families

> there were so many young nurses needing experience to go abroad that Philippine hospitals hardly had to pay. She earned about 64 cents an hour—$110 a month

> in the Philippines, where the women’s share among departing workers rose from 12 percent in 1975 to 72 percent three decades later

> No country relies on migrants more than the United Arab Emirates, where 88 percent of the population and nearly the entire private workforce is foreign-born. The tiny Emirates has more than eight million migrants—more than Canada, France, Australia, or Spain.

> By 2018, remittances were projected to top half a trillion dollars, and thirty countries had remittances worth more than a tenth of GDP. As a share of the Tajikistan GDP, remittances were 32 percent. No large country relies on remittances more than the Philippines.

> a 10 percent rise in remittances cut by 3.5 percent the number of people living in poverty. That’s about twice as much poverty reduction as a similar rise in domestic growth achieves, since the latter is more easily captured by elites.

> "brain gain." As many as half of skilled migrants eventually come home, sometimes with new skills or connections. Brain gain boosted the tech industries in India, China, and Taiwan, which drew on the ideas, networks, and capital that return migrants brought. Counterintuitively, countries that send skilled workers overseas may even increase the number at home, by stimulating supply. As Filipino nurses prospered abroad, the number of schools and graduates soared; most hoped to work overseas, but not all made it, creating a domestic glut.

> Kristine was five; Lara, three; and Dominique, two. In leaving them with Tita, Rosalie had set herself up for years of distance and insecurity. When they missed her, she felt guilty. When they didn’t, she felt alarmed

> Rosalie got the visa! Twenty-five years after we met … twenty years after nursing school … eight years after she joined the visa queue … against all odds.

> Ronald Reagan welcomed "millions of immigrants from every corner of the Earth" as a sign that God had raised up America as a City on a Hill. … Benjamin Franklin called the Germans of the 1750s the "most ignorant Stupid Sort" and warned they would "Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them." … Railing against the Irish "Papists in our midst," the Know-Nothings in 1854 sent a hundred members or allies to Congress. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 not only halted new arrivals but banned Chinese from citizenship … World War I and the Russian Revolution deepened the suspicion of foreigners, and the industrialists' hunger for cheap labor gave way to their fear of Bolsheviks. In 1917, Congress flatly banned most Asian immigrants and imposed a literacy test to keep out unwanted Europeans. When too many proved able to pass it, Congress imposed quotas. The Reed-Johnson Act of 1924 gave each nationality an annual cap based on its share of the 1890 census, a date chosen to keep out the southern and eastern Europeans, who had mostly come later. Immigration fell by more than half, and the arrival of Italians and Poles by more than 90 percent. … between 1880 and 1930 a quarter to a third of Europeans went back—roughly four million people. Among Italians, the share might have been as many as half.

> Rosalie and Chris vowed to preserve the kids' "Filipino values." What this meant wasn't wholly clear, even to themselves. Retaining the ability to speak Tagalog was on the list, and they made a rule, soon ignored, that the kids speak nothing else at home. Other Filipino values included respect for elders, obedience to parents, religious faith, placing family needs above individual desires, and socializing with other Filipinos. … Uneasy around Americans, Rosalie and Chris kept the kids from socializing outside school. The only houses where the kids could play were those of other Filipinos

> If at school she shrank, at home Kristine swaggered. "What we study here in fourth grade would be high school in the Philippines," she messaged a former classmate. Soon she posted a video on her Facebook page that announced in English she had forgotten how to speak Tagalog. … On Valentine's Day, Kristine made a card for Rowena that professed her "Amazing Love!" To Rosalie she wrote, "Thank you for your hard work." She didn’t mean to slight her mother. She just tended to overlook her

> Halo-halo was bound to follow. The drink is to Filipinos what lemonade is to Americans: a sweetened expression of national identity. Tagalog for "mix-mix," it blends crushed ice and condensed milk with a grab bag of trimmings that meets the most stringent definitions of "outside the box"—purple yam, green and red Jell-O, kidney beans, cheese, and coconut string. … Houston was getting a Jollibee, the Philippines's most popular fast-food outlet. (Think McDonald’s with halo-halo.)

> Overseas hiring is typically a last resort—the opposite of cheap labor—since recruiting costs are high and foreign nurses, who have more education than natives, often command higher salaries. In Galveston, the University of Texas Medical Branch paid Rosalie’s agency $60 an hour for the foreign nurses, more than 50 percent above what it paid local nurses.

> Of the nineteen new foreign nurses, Rosalie’s English was the weakest. In theory, that created risks. A landmark study published in 2000 found that nearly 100,000 Americans a year die from preventable medical errors and emphasized the importance of communications in clinical settings. "I'm still have doing," she told the lonely janitor, meaning she had things to do. When she gave another patient his "blood tinner," he snapped, "Can you speak English?"

> Nurses have long debated whether to cast the field as a profession or a calling; some find the latter condescending, an insult to their skill. Rosalie said that for her the calling matters more. "If you do something good for others, you’re doing something good for God." … By some estimates, as many as 40 percent of nurses meet the Maslach Burnout Inventory's definition of the syndrome. Caring for very sick patients is one risk factor. Working short staffed is another. Working twelve-hour shifts is a third.

> men scrimped and saved to move back to the Dominican Republic, but women tried to buy homes and appliances that would anchor them in New York. About a third of the couples divorced, with "the struggle over domestic authority" the leading source of strain.

> rather than demand equal treatment, the women took pains to reinforce male authority. That's because they wanted to preserve the men’s financial help and because they thought their children needed strong fathers to protect them from America's sexualized, materialistic culture.

> "The reason I help Chris—he is intelligent, he is respectful, he is kind, he is from the same province as my wife. And one of the reasons also, I want them to know I can help somebody get a job. I want them to know I can help an engineer."

> three of the Filipino nurses in Galveston had just bought new cars from the same dealership. If a new car provided a badge of success, she wanted one whether she could drive it or not. Rosalie didn't tell anyone back home. She put a picture on Facebook and studied the silence. "Nobody posts, 'Wow, you got a new car.' Nobody 'likes' it. Nobody said anything." Rosalie was hurt but not surprised. "They're just worried if it'll be a reason to send them less money." … Home buying had an unexpected effect on unit 7B: patient satisfaction scores plunged. Rosalie's ward once boasted the hospital's highest marks. But with mortgages to pay, the nurses extended their average workweek to fifty-six hours—50 percent more than the hospital as a whole.

> Two overlapping problems confront the most disadvantaged immigrants. One is the very low level of education, which depresses their wages and hampers their children in school (and because they live in poor neighborhoods, those schools typically stink). Another is the lack of legal status, which ensures their exploitation and deepens their poverty.

> Immigrants boost federal coffers (they pay more taxes than they collect in benefits) but impose costs on cities and states (largely for schools). In the second generation, however, state balance sheets turn positive as the investment in schooling pays off. The impact depends greatly on the newcomers' level of education. An immigrant lacking a high school education will cost federal, state, and local governments $225,000 over seventy-five years, counting his or her descendants. But a college-educated immigrant like Rosalie produces a net gain (taxes paid minus benefits received) of $504,000.

> The Philippines supplies up to a quarter of the world’s maritime labor and is known as the "ship-manning capital of the world." … She graduated cum laude with a hospitality degree and apprenticed at two high-end hotels, with her eye on the ultimate prize: a job as a cruise ship maid. It's the odd career ladder that requires four years of school and careful ticket punching for the chance to clean cabins at sea. But a cruise ship maid can earn $2,000 a month with tips— three or four times what a doctor makes. … Ship owners and insurers fought back. At their urging, the Philippine government imposed a contract on Filipino seafarers that barred them from seeking damages in foreign courts beyond those specified in their contracts. A detailed schedule specifies the compensation for 142 injuries ( )