That sounds kinda nice to be honest.

Spain and then briefly America exploited the Philippines for centuries. Spain made indentured servants of the local population and turned their economy into a cash crop resource extraction machine.

America took over around 1900 and continued that legacy, extracting sugar, coconut and hemp while stalling land reform laws for locals.

It makes sense to move to the nation where the fruits of your and your ancestors labor has been stolen to.

When the United States took over, it enacted the 1902 Public Land Act and the 1935 Commonwealth Agrarian Reform Act, but both were deliberately slowed and limited—public lands were sold only to wealthy buyers, and tenant‑farmers received scant compensation. Had those reforms been fully implemented, they would have ended Spain's haciendas legacy, transferring titles to the actual cultivators, reduced tenancy obligations, and created a more equitable, productive agricultural sector—laying groundwork for broader rural development and lessening the chronic poverty that still haunts the Philippines today.

Spain’s most blatant exploitation was the hacienda system, which concentrated vast tracts of fertile land in the hands of a few Spanish friars and colonial elites. This was essentially modernized version of medieval fiefdom where Filipinos had no claim to the land they worked on or to the surplus value their labor produced.

Polo y Servicio (forced labor) was a corvée system requiring able‑bodied men to render a set number of days (typically 40–60 per year) of unpaid labor on public works, hacienda fields, or military projects. Non‑compliance could lead to corporal punishment or imprisonment.

Tributo was cash or in‑kind levy imposed on every male household head (and sometimes on whole families). It was meant to fund the colonial administration, the church, and the military. Failure to pay could result in fines, confiscation of property, or forced labor.

America brought an end to the some of the Spanish exploitation but land ownership concentration among the wealthy persisted and the exploitative relationship continued, though in a less formalized framework.

This is the devastating legacy of European and American colonialism.

Finally, there were 4 years of Japanese occupation during WW2 that resulted in significant infrastructure loss.

Tl;Dr: Fuck imperialism.