A Filipino-American community leader says life in Bohol may outshine the American Dream he crossed an ocean to find

When Arturo Romanos left the Philippines in 2001, he carried with him a dream familiar to millions of his countrymen: to find greener pasture in America.

More than two decades later, the Boholano Filipino-American has found success in Sacramento, California — and a surprising conclusion.

“Honestly, life is much better there,” Romanos told radio hosts Ardy Araneta-Batoy and Gloria Leodivica Araneta during an interview on Open Forum on Feb. 18, 2026.

Romanos, who serves as president of the Tagbilaran Association of Northern California (TANOCAL) USA, is not the typical voice of disillusionment.

He is, by most measures, a success story.

Originally from Cagayan de Oro City, he married a Boholana and spent considerable years in Tagbilaran City before making the leap to America.

He has built a life in Sacramento.

He runs a community organization. He funds scholarships for financially challenged students back home.

And yet, he insists, the Philippines — Bohol in particular — holds an ease of living that the United States simply cannot match.

America has its advantages, he concedes.

The country offers a kind of social anonymity that levels the playing field.

“People there don’t care about your personal circumstance,” he said, “and everyone is equal.”

Blue-collar and skilled workers, he noted, are often better compensated than their white-collar counterparts — a stark reversal of Philippine workplace hierarchies.

Even farmers in the U.S., he pointed out, hold assets and earn incomes that dwarf what ordinary Filipino farmers take home.

But compensation, Romanos suggests, does not equal contentment.

Americans work doubly hard for what they earn.

The Philippines, by contrast, offers natural beauty, a gentler pace, and a warmth of place that money struggles to manufacture.

His frustration, however, is a practical one.

The income generated in the Philippines, he said, is difficult to multiply — making charitable work like his scholarship program harder to sustain from afar. It is precisely why he remains in California, even as his heart tilts toward Bohol.

For Romanos, the American Dream was never really about staying. It was about earning enough to give back — to the Boholana who became his wife, to the students who cannot afford their own futures, and to the island province he now calls, in every sense that matters, home.