A Proud Filipino American

and U.S. controlled lands. “The turn of the century saw the beginning of a great twenty-five-year surge of immigration, in which more than 100,000 Japanese nationals arrived in the U.S., and during which many of the foundational institutions of the Japanese American community were established.” These newcomers at first found much of their employment in migratory labor, working the farms, mines, canneries, and railroads of the American West, sometimes becoming active in the labor agitation of the period.

Although controversial to some, the Americans made the right decision to annex the Philippines after successfully freeing them from Spanish tyranny and rule. Without American rule and support, the Philippines would have been an easy target to be taken over by Germany, England or Japan who all would have savaged the land and further suppressed the people. The Filipinos were weak, inexperienced and not ready to establish their own government and self rule themselves. During the time of the annexation, the Americans needed a strategic place in that part of the world to protect their interests, expand their trading partners and show the world they were a power to be

Furthermore, South-Asian American presence began to flourish in America within the 1800s, and today South Asians are one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the United States ("An Introduction To South Asian American History").The countries: India, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives, and Afghanistan constitute the South Asian region. Although today Asian American communities are fast growing, they have endured many struggles

territory and the government once allowed the Filipinos to go to the U.S. to be laborers, the government no longer wanted the Filipinos to stay for the same reason that they did not want the Mexicans and Mexican Americans to remain in the U.S. The government’s offer to give the Philippines its independence showed clearly that the government did not want these nonwhite, yet hardworking laborers to take up spaces that supposedly should have been for the white Americans; the government offered the Filipinos a free ride back home if they were willing to leave. Additionally, the eager immigrants trying to get into the U.S. had to worry not only about fitting within the quota, but also pleasing the American consuls regarding the LPC clause; in 1930 President Hoover insisted that the LPC clause was tightened up and enforced better (Daniels 295). The LPC, Liable to become a Public Charge, clause was supposed to check that an immigrant was well off enough to enter the U.S. The American consulates ensured that the immigrant had a near-decent or decent amount of money to start off in the U.S. and was capable of keeping themselves economically stable. Considering the current economic crisis, the government did not want even more homeless people roaming around the streets without any direction, and therefore gave more power to the American consulates in letting them decide whether someone could enter the country or not. This clause made it

Asian Americans with no other ancestry comprise 4.8% of the U.S. population while people who are Asian alone or combined with at least one other race make up 5.6%

Ronald Takaki’s chapter in his sweeping 1989 text, Strangers from a Different Shore, “Dollar a Day, Dime a Dance: The Forgotten Filipinos”, outlines the experiences of primarily male Filipino immigrants to the U.S in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The author did a good job showing what the Filipino went through. Like many immigrants before them, they came seeking work and a better livelihood. They faced backbreaking work, low wages, and at time, extreme racism. However, in many ways the Filipino immigrant experiences were extremely different from other ethnic groups, the Chinese and Japanese immigrants.

The Filipino people had helped the US fight the Spanish-American War in hope to gain independence in return. However, instead of gaining independence the Philippines was annexed to the United States on December 10, 1898. When the Filipino’s had found they were going to be ruled over once again they were very unhappy, after all they had helped the US. When Aguinaldo had found out that the Philippines were going to be controlled by the US, he had declared war on the United States.

They “rose in revolt against American rule, as they had rebelled several times against the Spanish” (Zinn 297). They were right to do so, as the war only ended very poorly for their country and consequently “the death rate was enormous from battle casualties and from disease” (Zinn 297). On the contrary, both the Spanish-American war and the Philippine-American war had great economical advantage for the United States and demonstrated to the world how powerful their country was becoming, as some power-hungry citizens and the government wanted their country to appear. Nonetheless, there were those growing upset with the virtually unnecessary wars, and “…’patience, industry, and moderation’ preached to blacks, the ‘patriotism’ preached to whites, did not fully sink in. In the first years of the twentieth century, despite all the demonstrated power of the state, large numbers of blacks, whites, men, women became impatient, immoderate, unpatriotic” (Zinn 301) which would led to some growing unfaithful with the American

The migration of foreigners to the United States has been one of the most powerful forces shaping American history this was especially true between 1860 and 1920. (American A Narrative History, Pg. 827). When immigrants traveled to the new land it was an arduous journey. Arriving in large cities often without their families or understanding the language was difficult.

San Francisco today is not the same place it was hundreds of years ago. This is obvious in terms of the city’s modernization, but a change that is equally as important, is the huge amount of diversity in cultures. Chances are, if you were to ask a student at Skyline College if their parents were born in the United States, many of them would answer no. Every immigrant has their own story of how they ended up in San Francisco, but the most important are the stories of the very first groups. Most first generation Filipino Americans hear about the stories of how their families ended up in the United States, but never the stories of how the very first Filipinos got here. Why did the first group of Filipinos leave all that they had in the the

To the United States, they experienced one of the major waves of the immigration during on a colonial era, which was the first part of 19th century and also from the 1880s to 1920. As Many immigrants who came to America trying to

The Asian American immigrants are part of the ethnic and racial groups in the United States who lives in the continent of Asia. Asian have lived in the United States for a long time. Throughout the history, Asian Americans have encountered segragation and discrimination during the periods of changes in demographics, economic recession, and war. They have been discriminated by school policies and practices due to beign different. Paul Spickard (2007) has said that Asian Americans was an idea invented in the 1960s to bring together Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Americans for political purposes. Later, other

All minority groups seem to suffer and seem to advance in some others, all though advancements usually took years to accomplish. Everyone who has come to America has been a minority at one point in history. People who came to America from across the sea were a group that suffered compared to the Native Americans. Then the Native Americans became a group who suffered at the hands of the white man. For this paper I will solely look at the minorities during WWII, the African-Americans, the Japanese-Americans and Mexican-Americans.

Puerto Ricans first started migrating to the United States in the 1860s. Throughout the 1900s Puerto Ricans were migrating to the United States. After the implementation of Operation Bootstrap in 1947 the influx of Puerto Ricans rose dramatically. Because so many Puerto

However, the idea of forcing the western culture on the original people failed. Also, the Spanish brought foreign diseases with them to the Filipinos. Such as smallpox and leprosy. Finally, under the Spanish rule, the Philippines became part of the Spanish monarchy. This made other countries refuse to trade with the Philippines. There were one thing that was successful in the Spanish colonization, this was the influence of the Spanish language. Once the Philippines knows about the Spanish language, it became the main (official) language in Philippines. Wasn't a long amount of time until they changed it again to Tagalog, their old