Filipino Americans

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Filipino Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry back to the Philippines, an oriental island chain in the western Pacific Ocean south of Taiwan and east of the former Indochina and South China Sea, and have attained United States citizenship. According to the 2000 United States Census, Filipino Americans make up the largest Asian community in the United States surpassing Chinese Americans. There are 1,850,314 Filipino Americans reporting only one ethnicity. Most Filipino Americans reside in California. Smaller communities are found in Hawai'i, Illinois, New Jersey and New York.

Cultural Integration

Most Filipino Americans find it easy to integrate with American society. Filipino nationals have been living in an American molded society for over a century. The country was a United States territory and later a commonwealth from 12 December 1898 to 4 July 1946. Even after the Republic of the Philippines was established, it continued the flow of popular American culture into the country - from major league baseball and professional basketball to Coca-Cola, from MTV and Big Macs to text messaging on the latest tech gadgets out of the pages of the Sharper Image catalog. Philippines sports pages headline MLB and NBA sports scores from the mainland United States everyday. There isn't much of a culture shock when Filipino nationals migrate to the United States.

Language

Recent immigrants to the United States from the Philippines don't have much of a language barrier to overcome. Except for some communities in Hawai'i, the language barrier is almost nonexistent. The Philippines is the third largest English speaking country following the United States and the United Kingdom. English is the official language of instruction and government in the modern republic.

While an overwhelming majority of Filipino nationals and Filipino Americans do speak English fluently, most also speak Ilocano, Tagalog and Visayan at home. Tagalog (also known as Pilipino) is the sixth most spoken language in the United States.

Education

Filipino Americans tend to be highly educated. For example, the American Medical Association has deemed medical and healthcare education in the Philippines to equal the level of medical and healthcare education in the United States. Only Japan shares that distinction among the Asian nations. It is easy for Filipino nationals to enter the American healthcare workforce, inspiring them to settle and seek United States citizenship upon arrival. In fact with the shortage of American nurses created in the 1980s, clinics and hospitals in the United States have been hiring directly from the Philippines offering substantial salaries. According the the United States Census Bureau, 60,000 Filipino nationals migrated to the United States every year in the 1990s to take advantage of such professional opportunities.

40% of adult Filipino Americans are college and university graduates holding advanced degrees in the arts and sciences. Some Filipino nationals come to the United States for a college or university education, return to the Philippines and end up migrating to the United States again to settle. Younger generations of Filipino Americans born in the United States tend toward achieving college and university education, boosting the 40% statistic over time. Most study architecture, business administration, economics, education, engineering, medicine and nursing.

Economics

As a result of the level of education Filipino Americans have, the community enjoys substantial economic well-being. This is especially true for those working in nursing where the United States suffers a deficiency in skilled labor. With the shortage of nurses in America, clinics and hospitals have been more than enthusiastic to pay top dollar for Filipino American nurses and certified nurse assistants.

There is however an issue over pay parity in non-healthcare professions in the United States. Filipino Americans architects and engineers are paid less than their Latino and African American counterparts. This is also true for those working in the corporate environs and education. The discrimination is found to be worse among Filipino Americans seeking entry-level positions and for those who join the hospitality industry.

Religion

Unlike most other Asian Americans, Filipino Americans largely share mainstream American religious beliefs and values. This is in part to the Philippines' status as the only Christian country in Asia, rooted in its Augustinian and Jesuit heritage spanning the 600 years that it was a European enclave in the Orient. Filipino Americans tend to be devout in their faith traditions: attending church services every Sunday and on all major feast days, reading the Bible, even participating in evangelical Bible study in Protestant churches across America.

Invisible Minority

Ease of integration and assimilation has gained the Filipino American the label of "Invisible Minority." Unlike other Asian Americans, recent Filipino immigrants don't stand out as much: they speak English fluently, they are highly educated, they have economic well-being and they are Christians. There is also the unspoken understanding among Americans that Filipino Americans have European origins. In some communities especially in the American midwest, Filipino Americans have been grouped with the white community. This was true in the southern states during segregation when some towns accepted Filipinos in white establishments.

The label of "Invisible Minority" also extends to the lack of political power and representation of, by and for Filipino Americans. In the mid-1990s, only 100 Filipino Americans held elected office. All except for one served at the municipal or state legislative level.

History

  • 1763, first permanent Filipino settlements established in North America near Barataria Bay in southern Louisiana
  • 1898, United States annexes the Philippines
  • 1903, first Pensionados, Filipinos invited to attend college in the United States on American government scholarships, arrive
  • 1906, first Filipino laborers migrate to the United States to work on the Hawaiian sugarcane and pineapple plantations, California and Washington asparagus farms, Washington lumber, Alaska salmon canneries
  • 1920s, Filipino labor leaders organize unions and strategic strikes to improve working and living conditions
  • 1930s, first Filipino women and children migrate to the United States
  • 1939, Washington Supreme Court rules unconstitutional the Anti-Alien Land Law of 1937 which banned Filipino Americans from owning land
  • 1946, Republic of the Philippines established
  • 1965, Congress passes Immigration and Nationality Act to facilitate ease of entry for skilled Filipino laborers
  • 1987, Benjamin J. Cayetano becomes the first Filipino American and second Asian American elected Lt. Governor of a state of the Union
  • 1992, Velma Viloria becomes first Filipino American and first Asian American elected to the Washington State Legislature
  • 1994, Benjamin J. Cayetano becomes the first Filipino American and second Asian American elected Governor of a state of the Union

Further Reading

Nonfiction

Fiction & Poetry

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