A FEW months ago, newspapers ran a story on the 2020 high school valedictorian of the Ateneo de Manila University who graduated from Yale University with a perfect grade point average of 4.0. He was recruited to work for a New York City-based multi-asset class quantitative trading firm after graduation. The top Philippine Science High School graduate the previous year also graduated from Yale in 2023 with a degree in data science, then took his internship at a global consulting giant, which recruited the Pisay achiever for its AI unit right after graduation.

Did the two academically gifted young men ever consider, even for a moment, the possibility of returning to the Philippines after excelling at Yale? Maybe. The pull of the United States, the world's biggest economy and the dreamed-of destination of young men and women all over the world, may have, however, swayed the final decision those two young men made: to stay in the US, probably for good.