History Of Filipino Immigration To America
Manric Hock
The waves of independence movements launched by leaders like Gandhi and Kenyatta disrupted the ties that bound empire together. And yet, in many decolonized nations, once colonial governance had been stripped away, migration pathways remained intact. In Unit 8 of the AP World History: Modern course, students are asked to explain the economic changes and continuities resulting from decolonization. One continuity they may find is that formerly colonialized peoples continued to migrate to the countries that once ruled their own. This continuity helped maintain cultural and economic connections through the changes of decolonization. The story of Filipino migration to the United States is an illustrative example of this process.
The Spanish Empire controlled the Philippines until the end of the Spanish-American war in 1898, when the United States annexed the islands. What followed was a brutal war of colonization, after which large-scale immigration from the Philippines to the US began. From 1906 to 1932, over 150,000 Filipinos migrated to the US. About half of them went to Hawaii to work in sugarcane farming, and most of the rest traveled to California to work on fruit and vegetable farms. Like the Philippines, Hawaii had been annexed by the United States in 1898. As part of the American overseas empire, people from the Philippines were treated as US nationals for purposes of migration. That made relocation to the US relatively simple and safe.
After 1965, US immigration law changed, eliminating discrimination based on country of origin, and Filipino immigration numbers swelled. Many of the new arrivals were admitted thanks to petitions from family members already living in the US. From 1965 to 1988, over 800,000 Filipinos immigrated to the US. In the 1980s, Filipinos were consistently among the largest number of immigrants arriving in this country.
Large-scale migration is often made possible thanks to the efforts of first-wave migrants and by the cultural, economic, and social ties they foster. These early generations of migrants make it easier for later migrants to make the journey. When they arrive, immigrants find ready communities and familiar social structures and support. The spread of industrial empires all over the world in the long nineteenth century increased the speed, extended the range, and changed the patterns of global migration flows. Decolonization certainly changed many facets of life and governance around the world. Yet the paths and patterns established by generations of colonized people migrating throughout empires ensured that many continuities persisted. The choices of migrants continue to propel many economic and demographic structures in our world today.
As your students consider empire and decolonization as two factors that shaped global migration patterns, you might have them reflect on the immigrant history of your own community. What historical or current immigrant communities are prominent in your town or region? What factors pushed and pulled those migrants as they chose that place as their home?
About the author: Bennett Sherry holds a PhD in history from the University of Pittsburgh and has undergraduate teaching experience in world history, human rights, and the Middle East. Bennett writes about refugees and international organizations in the twentieth century and is one of the historians working on the OER Project courses.
Cover image: Participants march up Madison Avenue holding Philippine flags during the annual Philippine Independence Day Parade. Ryan Rahman/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images.
One story of Washington state is a story of immigration, but it is not the simple tale of assimilation or acculturation. Immigrants brought pieces of culture from their native lands to Washington state, where they melded them with pieces taken from American culture. Immigrants did not remain unchanged or melt into a common society, however. Instead, Washington is a mosaic made of different peoples coming together to create new lives in a new land. The Asian American experience is part of this mosaic. The documents that accompany this essay demonstrate how Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos came to Washington, struggled against discrimination, labored to earn their living, and created distinctive cultures and identities. These documents chronicle, in a small way, how some Asian immigrants became Asian Americans. "Asian American" is, by necessity, a broad term that lumps different peoples together. Because of space restrictions, this project focuses on Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Americans, the three largest and oldest groups in Washington. Other groups, notably immigrants from Korea, the Pacific Islands, and Southeast Asia, receive limited attention here. It is hoped that students and teachers alike will use this project as a guide for building their own collections on other Asian Americans.
The documents are organized by three general themes: migration, labor, and community. Migration is the process of people moving from place to place. Why people move away or are pushed out from where they lived, and why they are pulled to settle somewhere else, are the central questions behind migration. Once in the United States, Asian immigrants often migrated to and from places of work; others, after living abroad for a time, returned to their native lands. Asians, like all immigrants, were a people in motion. Labor refers to the act of working and the social associations that workers create through their shared experience. Most Asians came to Washington state to fill a need for workers in the rapidly developing Pacific Northwest. Limited by discrimination and economic factors, Asian immigrants often worked menial jobs in hazardous industries for little compensation. But work was also a source of group pride and political activism; labor was a catalyst for social and cultural change. Community stands for how Asians and Asian Americans struggled to define their social and cultural place in the larger American society. The creation of community is not a simple process, however. Generational tension, racism, and economic concerns all worked to pull Asian and Asian American communities apart. But these communities, like other immigrant groups in U.S. history, responded creatively to hardship. Applying for U.S. citizenship, opening businesses, running for political office or lobbying for social services are just some of the ways that Asians and Asian Americans worked to create dynamic communities in Washington state.
What follows is a brief overview, written to help teachers navigate through this material. Those interested in learning more should consult the bibliography for appropriate books and resources. A timeline of significant dates in Asian American history, with a focus on Washington state, also follows. Additional details for specific documents are provided in the concordance and index included here.
Migration is one theme that unites the histories of Asian American peoples in the Pacific Northwest. Like immigrants from Europe during the nineteenth century, Asians were part of a global stream of people flowing into the United States. While Asian immigration reached its high-water mark on the West Coast, it transformed America, adding diversity to an already multicultural society.
The Chinese were the first Asians to migrate in significant numbers to Washington state. In the mid-nineteenth century, China seemed on the verge of collapse. The Taiping Rebellion nearly tore Chinese society apart, British warships devastated China's major ports during the Opium War, and periodic flooding and famine wrecked the countryside. South China, primarily the area around Guangzhou (Canton), suffered the most; and it was from here that the vast majority of immigrants came. Initially drawn to work in California's gold fields or Hawai'i's sugar plantations, Chinese were also drawn to work in the Pacific Northwest. By the 1860s, news of a gold strike in eastern Washington brought Chinese immigrants here; by the 1870s, Chinese were recruited to work on railroad construction as well as in logging camps and salmon canneries. Immigration was illegal before the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, but labor contractors and immigrants conveniently ignored such restrictions.
Similar push and pull factors drew Japanese immigrants to Washington state. Following the forcible opening to Western trade in the 1850s, Japanese society underwent wrenching economic and cultural transformations. The Meiji government, bent on industrializing the country as quickly as possible, adopted policies that forced Japanese farmers off of their lands, forcing many to work as migrant laborers on Hawai'ian sugar plantations. By the mid-1880s, Hawai'i relied heavily on Japanese contract labor. After Hawai'i was annexed by the United States in 1898, and after the passage of the Organic Act in 1900 that created the Territory of Hawai'i, many Japanese living on the islands traveled to the mainland. Others, driven out by worsening economic and social conditions at home, attracted by high pay and a demand for labor in the Pacific Northwest, followed directly from Japan. Like the Chinese before them, Japanese migrants picked produce, cut and milled trees, built railroads and butchered fish.
Filipinos, who arrived in the third wave of Asian immigration to Washington, were a comparatively unique case. The Philippines were an American colony, acquired after the 1898 Spanish-American War, and remained under American jurisdiction until after World War II. Filipinos were recognized as U.S. nationals, a status just below full citizenship, and allowed to migrate anywhere within the states. As with the Chinese and Japanese, Filipino migrants were pushed out by economic hardship at home and pulled to migrate by economic opportunity abroad. Changing land tenure patterns following U.S. annexation limited prosperity in the Philippines, and labor remained in short supply in the Pacific Northwest. Moreover, Filipinos educated in American-run schools after the war considered themselves American and entitled to all the privileges that entailed. Filipino women married American soldiers and returned with their husbands to the United States; other Filipinos came for jobs in agriculture and the salmon fisheries. By the 1920s, Filipinos were a major segment of Washington's Asian American population.
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