Posted by Belarmino Dabalos Saguing Rome, Italy 16.02.2016
How it started
A chance encounter in 1901 between a
trustee of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association (HSPA) and a band of
Filipino musicians en route to the United States led the planter to speculate
about Filipinos as potential plantation workers, for he felt that these
musicians had a "healthy physique and robust appearance." Even before
1907, Hawaii had begun looking for other pools of unskilled labor on the island
of Luzon. During 1907 some 150 workers were sent to Hawaii. Two years later,
with Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans now banned from immigrating to the United
Sates, the HSPA returned to the Philippines, looking for workers. The Bureau of
Census reported that there were 2,361 Filipinos in Hawaii in 1910. Recruiting
efforts after 1909 centered on the Visayan Islands, Cebu in particular, and
Luzon's Tagalogs.
In 1915 recruiters focused on Luzon's
northwestern Ilocano provinces: Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, and La Union.
Immigrants from Pangasinan, Zambales, and Cagayan account for about 25 percent
of those from Ilocano. The Ilocanos, suffering greatly from economic hardship
and overpopulation, proved willing recruits. The HSPA awarded a three-year
labor contract to Filipinos migrating to Hawaii; this paid their passage to
Hawaii and guaranteed free subsistence and clothing. If they worked a total of
720 days, they received return passage money. A worker was not penalized for
violating his contract, but if he did, he forfeited all guarantees, including
his return passage. Plantation owners found the Ilocanos to be the "best
workers," and poverty in their provinces provided a stimulant for
out-migration. By 1935, young single Ilocano men were the largest Filipino
ethnic group in Hawaii.
According to census figures, the
Filipino population in Hawaii climbed from 21,031 in 1920 to 63,052 in 1930,
but dropped to 52,659 by 1940. The decline in the number of Filipinos during
the late 1930s is attributable to the return of many to the Philippines during
the Depression years and to others seeking greener pastures on the West Coast.
The high point of immigration to Hawaii occurred in 1925, when 11,621 Filipinos
arrived in Honolulu. At that point, the HSPA closed active recruiting in the
Philippines, relying upon self-motivation to maintain the influx of workers.
In 1910, only 406 Filipinos lived on the
United States mainland. The largest group, of 109, lived in New Orleans, the
remnants of a nineteenth-century settlement of Filipino sailors who came ashore
at that port city, married local women, and found jobs. The state of Washington
had 17 and California had only five. In 1920, 5,603 Filipinos lived along the
West Coast or in Alaska. California then had 2,674 Filipinos while Washington
had 958. The northeastern United States had the second-largest number: 1,844.
The 1920s saw dramatic changes as
California's Filipino population, mostly single young men, increased by 91
percent; over 31,000 Filipinos disembarked at the ports of San Francisco and
Los Angeles. In 1930, there were 108,260 Filipinos in the United States and the
Territory of Hawaii. California had 30,470, and this number rose to 31,408 by
1940. Washington had 3,480 in 1930 and 2,222 in 1940. Apart from the West Coast
and Hawaii, the next largest concentration was in New York, which in 1930 had
1,982 and 2,978 in 1940. Many of these Filipinos experienced significant racial
discrimination.
POSTWAR IMMIGRATION
Emigrants in the second wave left the
Philippines in increasing numbers during the late 1940s and 1950s. This group
included war brides, the "1946 boys," and military recruits. War
brides were the spouses of American GIs who married Filipina women while being
stationed in the Philippines. After the passage of the War Brides Act of 1946,
it is estimated that 5,000 brides came to the United States. Contracted workers
called the "1946 boys", or Sakadas, numbered 7,000 were a major
component of the second wave. They were the last large group of agricultural
laborers brought to Hawaii by the sugar planters. Plantation owners brought
them in an effort to break up the first interracial and territorial-wide strike
organized by the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU).
The Philippine workers supported the ILWU strike, which resulted in the first
major victory for Hawaii agricultural workers. Filipinos who came to the United
States through the U.S. military were another component of the second wave. A
provision of the 1947 US-RP Military Bases Agreement allowed the Navy to
recruit Filipino men for its mess halls. During the same year President Truman
ended racial segregation in the military and the Filipino replaced African
Americans in mess halls. By the 1970s, more than 20,000 Filipinos had entered
the United States through the U.S. Navy.
Internal conditions in the new republic
contributed to many moving from the islands to the United States. By 1960
Hawaii, which had become a state a year earlier, had 69,070 Filipinos, followed
closely by California with 65,459. The two states together accounted for 76
percent of all Filipinos living in the United States. The Pacific Coast states
had 146,340 (83 percent of the total), while the East and the South had
slightly more than 10,000 each and the Great Lakes states had 8,600. Included
in these census numbers were second-generation Filipino Americans.
Changes in American immigration law in
1965 significantly altered the type and number of immigrants coming to the
United States. Unlike pre-war immigrants who largely worked as unskilled
laborers in West Coast and Hawaiian agriculture and in Alaska's salmon
canneries, the third wave was composed of larger numbers of well-educated
Filipinos between the ages of 20 and 40 who came looking for better career
opportunities than they could find in the Philippines. This highly skilled
third-wave population had a command of the English language, allowing them to
enter a wide range of professions.
Unlike earlier arrivals, most of the
Filipino immigrants after 1970 came to the United States without intending to
return to the Philippines. In 1970, 343,060 Filipinos lived in the United States;
in 1980, the number was 781,894, with 92 percent of these living in urban
areas. By 1990, the number of Filipinos had reached 1,450,512. The West, as
reported in the 1990 Census, had 991,572, or 68.4 percent of the Filipinos. The
other three areas, Northeast, Midwest, and South, ranged from 8.8 to 12.5
percent. California in 1990 had the largest Filipino population, almost 50
percent of the total; Hawaii had fallen to second place. Every state in the
union had a Filipino population. Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey,
Texas, and Washington had Filipino populations in excess of 30,000.
Acculturation and Assimilation
From the outset of their arrival in
Hawaii and the Pacific Coast, Filipinos, as a color-visible minority,
encountered prejudice and discrimination as they pursued their economic and
educational goals. One major problem for Filipinos prior to 1946 was the issue
of American citizenship.
From 1898 to 1946, Filipinos, classified
as American nationals, could travel abroad with an American passport and could
enter and leave the United States at will, until the Tydings-McDuffie Act
limited the number entering as immigrants to 50 a year. The opportunity for
most Filipinos to become American citizens before 1946 was closed to them by
the United States Supreme Court in its 1925 decision, Toyota v. United States.
This decision declared that only whites or persons of African descent were
entitled to citizenship, thus closing the opportunity for Filipinos to become
United States citizens. Those Filipinos, however, who had enlisted and served
three years in the United States Navy, Marine Corps, or Naval Auxiliary Service
during World War I and who had received an honorable discharge could apply for
citizenship. In 1946, Congress passed a law that permitted Filipinos to qualify
for American citizenship.
The inability to acquire citizenship,
besides being a social stigma, presented serious economic and political
implications. Since most states required citizenship to practice law, medicine,
and other licensed professions and occupations, Filipinos were prohibited from
these occupations. Filipinos had no recognized voice of protest to speak for
them, unlike immigrants from other countries who had ambassadors and consuls to
support them. The Philippines had a Resident Commissioner in Washington who
could protest, but this commissioner generally proved ineffective in dealing
with federal and state bureaucracies.
Throughout the Depression years of the
1930s, Filipinos found it difficult to qualify for federal relief. Although the
Works Progress Administration in 1937 ruled that Filipinos were eligible for
employment on WPA projects, they could not receive preference since they were
not citizens. During the 1920s and 1930s, those Filipinos living on the Pacific
Coast encountered prejudice and hostilities resulting in hateful discrimination
and race riots. A sagging economy made assimilation difficult if not
impossible.
At the height of discrimination in
California, the California Department of Industrial Relations published in 1930
a biased study, Facts about Filipino Immigration into California, claiming that
Filipinos posed economic and social threats. On the West Coast, Filipinos were
frequently denied service in restaurants and barbershops and were barred from swimming
pools, movies, and tennis courts. They found that their dark skin and imperfect
English marked them, in the eyes of whites, as being different and therefore
inferior. White Californians presented several contradictions that confused
Filipinos. Farmers and certain urban enterprises welcomed them because they
provided cheap labor. However, discriminatory attitudes relegated them to
low-paying jobs and an inferior social existence. Consequently, many other
Californians criticized the Filipinos' substandard living conditions and
attacked them for creating health problems and lowering the American standard
of living. Faced with discrimination in real estate, Filipinos were forced into
"Little Manilas" in California cities. Filipinos in cities such as
Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., also clustered together.
Discrimination against Filipinos has
persisted into the late twentieth century, but civil rights legislation,
affirmative action, and equal opportunity laws have improved the daily lives of
most Filipinos who have arrived in recent decades. A perhaps unexpected form of
discrimination for immigrants arriving after 1965 was the hostility that they
met from second-generation Filipinos who saw the new arrivals as snobs and
upstarts who were benefitting from advances made by the older group. At the
same time, more recent Filipino immigrants have treated their older compatriots
with disdain, considering them the equivalent of "hillbillies."
During the 1990 Census, Filipinos
reported a median income of $46,698, while the median income for the entire
United States was $35,225. This can be attributed to the ongoing stream of
highly educated and highly skilled Filipinos from the Philippines and to second
and third generation Filipino Americans finishing college.
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