CHAPTER 4 The Big Divide

Differences Hindering Unity

Census studies of Filipino immigration to the U.S. usually describe three “waves” or influxes of arrivals, evoking an image of a relentless, unstoppable mass of immigrants rolling in from the horizon. Another vision conjures boatloads of people, soaking wet, struggling ashore. The first “wave,” in truth, came by ship. They were young men hired at the beginning of the twentieth century after the United States acquired the Philippines from Spain in 1898. As America's first colony, the islands provided laborers to work the fields of Hawaii and California. In California, they harvested lettuce and asparagus. Nonagricultural workers performed domestic or personal services, for example, as hotel bellboys, restaurant busboys, or dishwashers. Others worked in factories processing fruits and vegetables, and in Alaska's fish canneries. This period of immigration lasted until 1934, when Filipinos were classified as nationals of an American commonwealth country.

Histories of this period recount high anti-Filipino racial discrimination, especially on the West Coast, by Americans who viewed the newcomers as a threat to their jobs. Most of the Filipinos toiled in low-paying and menial jobs and lived in substandard housing. Their heart-wrenching experiences are described in the anthology Letters in Exile.¹A California Department of Industrial Relations study in 1930 counted 31,092 Filipino immigrants; by 1940, there were 50,000. Most were single males. One study claimed that “official and popular racism prevented the mass of itinerant bachelor farm workers from starting families and producing new generations of U.S.-born Filipinos…Filipinos could not bring wives, marry into other races, own property or vote—they were not allowed to become Americans…The virtual absence of families precluded the establishment of deeply rooted and enduring communities whose economic, political, and cultural power could grow over time.”²

In the second “wave,” from 1934 to the mid-1960s, Filipinos lost their right of entry as American Commonwealth nationals. Immigration was severely reduced because of legislation that established a quota system based on national origin. Most Filipinos who arrived during this period were nonquota immigrants and temporary visitors, often students. Those who had fought alongside the Americans in liberating the Philippines also qualified as nonquota immigrants. It is estimated that one-third, or four thousand, of the arrivals during this period served with the U.S. armed forces.

The third influx began in 1965, when a new immigration law replaced the quota system. Called the preference system, it set a maximum of twenty thousand immigrants from each non–Western Hemisphere country. The intention of this new legislation was to reunite families. Spouses, minor unmarried children, and parents of U.S. citizens were not counted against the limit. Thus many more than twenty thousand Filipinos actually gained entry.

The new law also awarded immigrant visas to those with particular occupational skills. Thus the gates were opened wide to professionals such as health-care workers, accountants, engineers, teachers, lawyers, and highly skilled technicians. The Economist, a London-based weekly, reported that American hospitals were recruiting entire graduating classes of Filipino nurses. A University of the Philippines study concluded that this post-1965 brain drain had a higher monetary value than twenty years’ worth of American aid to the Philippines.³In one estimate in 1972, a foreign medical doctor was valued at $50,000 when he entered the United States. For other types of professionals, it was $20,000. The INS reported that in 1968, when the new system became fully effective, about 25 percent of all doctors, more than 40 percent of all pharmacists and dentists, and 58 percent of all dietitians who immigrated to the United States came from the Philippines. The professionals had relatively weak ties to people and institutions in the homeland. They wanted higher salaries, better working conditions, and greater professional opportunities not available there.

During the decade between 1960 and 1970, the Filipino population nearly doubled, to 343,000. Two-thirds of that additional population consisted of new immigrants, and that was the segment whose hearts and minds the political exiles struggled mightily to win over. They would soon find out that there was no such thing as a typical Filipino immigrant; as a result, minor and major differences among the newcomers would influence their organizing goals and strategies. In the 1970s, the new immigrants clustered primarily in two places—40 percent of them were in California, and 28 percent in Hawaii—where they joined the majority of earlier immigrants who had come during the first two waves. Between then and 1990, more than 40,000 new immigrants settled in the U.S. each year. Hence, in the span of approximately two decades, the Filipino population swelled to 1.4 million, 300,000 of whom arrived during the Marcos era, between 1972 and 1986. They fanned out from the West Coast to other states—Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Virginia, Texas, Florida, and Maryland.

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