Filipino Americans

Introduction

Filipino Americans are one of the fastest-growing Asian American ethnic groups immigrating to the United States. According to the 1990 census, there were 1.4 million Filipino Americans nationwide. By the 2000 census, there were more than 2.4 million people with Filipino ancestry living in the United States, making Filipino Americans the second-largest Asian American group after Chinese Americans. Filipino Americans are a unique ethnic group representing diverse strengths and assets, as well as issues and problems that are not always manifested or shared with other Asian American individuals and communities.

In terms of assets, Filipino Americans have a long history of contributing to and being part of the historical fabric of the United States. Even in the early days of immigration, wherever Filipino Americans resided, the immigrants contributed significantly to the economy and to religious, community, political, and labor organizations. They were loyal to the various American institutions where they worked, despite the economic exploitation and racism they experienced. In recent years, Filipino Americans have contributed to the fields of government and politics, engineering and discovery, the military, and journalism and communications. Filipino Americans have been elected and appointed to positions in government, including a state governor. Likewise, Filipino Americans have contributed to the areas of education, business, medicine, the arts and entertainment, and sports.

Filipino American History: Origins and Immigration

History helps to underscore the heterogeneity and differences among Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders, the group to which Filipino Americans are commonly assigned. To fully understand the Filipino American experience, it is first necessary to gain an awareness of Philippine history.

The Philippines, named after King Philip II of Spain, is a nation consisting of approximately 7,100 islands divided into three major regions: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The archipelago is situated in the southeast region of Asia. Over the centuries, various ethnic, cultural, and religious groups influenced the development of the Philippines as a nation. These groups included Indonesians, Malaysians, Chinese, Muslims, and Spaniards, as well as people of the United States. Early archeological records and narratives pointed to the islands maintaining relations with neighboring countries. Before the Spanish presence in the Philippines, Filipinos had their own culture, customs, arts, literature, religious beliefs, government, and social structures. The indigenous Filipino culture was shaped by the island environment and was also influenced by its neighbors, the Malays and Indonesians, the Chinese, and the Asian Indians. For example, Tagalog, a language commonly spoken in the Philippines and by Filipino Americans, has been identified as sharing linguistic roots with Sanskrit. In the late 1300s, Islam was introduced to Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippines. With the Spanish arrival in 1521, Filipino Muslims resisted Spanish colonization and fought against Catholic-Spanish conversion, and they maintain their Islamic culture and traditions today. However, for more than three centuries the Philippines was under Spanish colonial rule and was profoundly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church, producing the only predominately Catholic country in Asia. Catholicism shaped the political landscape and social development of Filipinos.

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