It’ll be a lot easier if you two just live in the US. She’ll choose that anytime.
You are an abject failure as a psychic.
She refers to the US as “this big damn freezer place.”
Take her to Hawaii. There’s a huge Filipino population there.
Or Canada - it ha a big Filipino population and the freezer attributes… 
I’m reminded of one of Jared Diamond’s reminiscences about his favorite New Guinea tribesmen; mentioned that anyone who did well financially ended up hosting a huge household of various relatives all living of his good fortune.
Hawaii has an affordability problem. Some might say I have a low-budget problem. In the PI life is cheap in more than one way. A couple can be quite comfortable by US standards on US$1,200 per month if they own the house they live in.
This is completely a scam, means she is asking you for money. They can jail you for debt in many Mid East countries. It’s better to avoid such situations.
She’s one of the few who think that.
In his defense the woman I was talking to when explaining it was -2 degrees C where I was at thought it sounded crazy that people would live there and wondered how we did not freeze to death. Then again, half of the house she lives in just has screens not windows, so the question makes more sense coming from that perspective. So it may be rare, but far from unique.
Cite, please. The average Filipino or Filipina knows the US only by way of TV. To them it’s a place where no one has to work very hard, everyone has a comfortable life and when the weather is cold it’s mostly just another kind of fun.
The first time my sweetie fell in snow so deep she couldn’t get up by herself, it was quite a sight. The wind really freaked her out too.
Just the song: “I want to be in America”
Now you give a cite on what the average Filipino knows about America.
It doesn’t hurt to question everything, just to be sure you are not being taken completely. If that was the way it happened, it does not sound like she was simply exploiting something in the news, it sounds like a real part of her situation.
I’m sure she has a good explanation as to how she still had internet. Or had internet in the first place.
I agree though, it sounds like she was just trying to squeeze a bit more money. Unless you saw the same tendency earlier in the conversations, there’s a good chance relatives were telling her what to say. It sounds like they fed her the lines they expected to work on their type of relationship (“visit relatives”), don’t realize it carris less weight with North Americans.
Cell networks were back up about 3 weeks after but spotty. There were people doing quite a brisk business recharging cell phones from portable generators connected to banks of plug bars.
She had been living and working in taiwan until about 6 weeks before typhoon. Claimed she made about $900us/mo working for a chip manufacturer (6 days a week, 12 hour days, company provided dorms that she lived in. So having a smart phone isnt much of a stretch.
Just to back this up - we sent about $400 to a fellow in Egypt. he was our guide and tour organizer for two trips there in the last two years, so we knew him personally and had talked to him quite a bit while he escorted us around the Cairo area.
We’re not wealthy, but compared to most people, we’re fairly comfortable - two incomes, no kids to support, house close to paid for, etc. We don’t have family who need anyting.
Like the typhoon, you think things couldn’t get much worse for them, but it did. If tourism was way down after the revolution, it pretty much dried up after the latest trouble, and isn’t likely to return for a while. We liked the guy, he never asked for money. He maybe was exaggerating how bad off things were, but so what? If it were a close family member with a real need, we could afford a lot more - so even if he was feeding us a line on some of his problems, we don’t mind helping out, as partial thanks for the good time he provided us with on our trip.
So same thing here - as long as you are relatively confident that you are helping someone, relatively confident their story makes sense and is consistent, and relatively confident it’s going to help - so what? you can spend two or three hundred or more on a weekend in Vegas or New York; if you choose to do something else, that’s your choice. As long as you aren’t mortgaging the house to help a Nigerian princess, how you use your disposable income is your choice.