Filipino Immigration to Continental United States and to Hawaii (The American Immigration Collection) by Bruno Lasker

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The census of 1920 enumerated only 5,600 Filipino residents in
the United States. By 1929 this number had multiplied ten times.
A similar migration to Hawaii started a decade earlier and it is
estimated that at the beginning of 1931 there were about 75,000
Filipinos in those islands. Of those on the mainland of the United
States the vast majority have remained near the Pacific Coast. Nine-
tenths of them are men, and four-fifths are under thirty years of age.
While few of these latest of our immigrants intend to stay per-
manently in this country, we are told that thus far only one in fifteen
of the arrivals has returned to his native land (p. 324).

Strictly speaking, the Filipinos are not immigrants, for their home-
land belongs to the United States and they are American subjects.
But the national sentiment against Asiatic immigration is rapidly
being mobilized against them, and a bill was introduced in Congress
in 1928 providing for their total exclusion. Little of the opposition
to Filipino immigrants is seen or heard in our Eastern states. In
the far West, however, serious conflicts have arisen between them
and the other residents, and on several occasions these have broken
out in violent clashes. While in many respects this is but repeating
the experience of all our immigrant peoples, the demand for ex-
clusion of Filipinos raises some entirely new problems. It compli-
cates the issues involved in the movement for the independence of
the Philippines, and it revives the bitterness aroused among the
Asiatic nations a few years ago by our total exclusion of the
Japanese.

These special considerations led the American Council of the
Institute of Pacific Relations to undertake a study of the problems
involved in the migration of the Filipinos, and Bruno Lasker was
commissioned by the Research Committee of the Council to do the
work. His book is one of a series of reports laid before the China
conference of the Institute in the fall of 1931. While both the
author and the Research Committee regard this only as a preliminary
survey, the report itself shows that all available material was
thoroughly canvassed, and the analysis of the problems involved
from the points of view of all the parties affected impresses the
reader as considerably more than a preliminary effort.
When the results of the census of 1930 are available there may be
some correction of the statistical facts about Filipino immigration.
But the problems that this immigration has raised both in the United
States and in Hawaii are described by Mr. Lasker with such
thoroughness and wealth of detail that they are hardly likely to be
changed in any essentials by subsequent studies. Policies and pro-
grams as practiced and advocated both in the Philippine Islands
and in Hawaii and the United States are also thoroughly reviewed,
although the report does not attempt to make recommendations in
these respects.

The report is presented in six parts with eight appendices con-
taining detailed statistical information and descriptions of illustra-
tive problems. After an introductory consideration of the main
facts of Filipino migration, it proceeds in Part II to a consideration
of the economic, social and educational problems that this migration
has raised for the people of the United States as well as for the
Filipinos themselves. Part III is concerned with the special prob-
lems in Hawaii, and Part IV analyzes the causes of emigration from
the Philippines. In Part V policies and programs are considered
as these have appeared in the Philippine Islands, in Hawaii and
in the United States. A summary and conclusions are given in
Part VI.

While no obvious solutions appear in Mr. Lasker's study, and the
question raised by the agitation for Filipino exclusion admits of no
simple answer, the report presents the data on which sound and
wise policies must be based. The author and the American Council
of the Institute of Pacific Relations have made it possible for the
Congress and the people of the United States to base their policies
and judgments on facts rather than on prejudices and rumors, and,
however little use is actually made of the information they have
made available in the final determination of policy, the country will
be no less indebted to them for having attempted to inform us before
we act.

In the past our immigration policies have been largely determined
by immediate needs resulting from conflicts of interests that were
thoughtlessly allowed to develop. The present report comes at a
time when the problems of Filipino immigration have not yet reached
this acute stage. It is possible still to take a long view of the
effects of any policy we may adopt. The opposition to the Filipinos
is due more to the experience in the past with other orientals than
with immediate evils that the Filipinos have brought. We can afford
to wait and to consider the effects of absolute exclusion on the move
ment for independence in the Philippines, on our foreign relations
generally in the Far East, and on the labor sys!tem of Hawaii. The
present report gives us the necessary information for such a sound
and considered policy.
- W.M. Leiserson

Hardcover: 445 pages
Publisher: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969
Language: English
NO ISBN