A Little Bit About Our Status

It is the 1930s, Stockton, California. (Only an hour drive away in present times from San Francisco, a great melting pot of cultures and ethnicities. It has a large Asian American population.)

On a store window it says, “Positively No Filipinos Allowed.” Now it’s the 1990s, and obviously we’re far past hatred like that. Maybe we are, but Filipinos in America still have a far way to go in establishing themselves as a people in this nation.

Of course, we’re considered a minority and relative newcomers to this land. However, most people don’t know that Filipinos have been arriving in the New World as early as 1607. That’s 42 years before Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement, was established. Yet, today we’re still labeled strictly as immigrants, and we still don’t get the respect that we deserve in this country.

The 1990 US Census tallied 1.4 million Filipinos in America. (Actually, there’s more.) The Census says 27% of the 751,000 Filipinos in the labor force work as doctors, nurses, lawyers, etc. An additional 37 percent are in technical, sales or administrative support occupations. That’s 64% in white-collar jobs.

50 years ago was when almost half the number of Filipinos were in physically strenuous jobs in agriculture, forestry, and fishing. Now, only 1.6% work in those types of jobs. These numbers shouldn’t fool you though. There is still a lot of progress that Filipinos have to achieve.

This improvement is not the result of the empowerment of the Filipinos who came here in the early 1900s. Instead, it is because of the great influx of highly skilled immigrants that came to America after 1965. This was the year America loosened its immigration policy for the skilled and professionals. Of the Filipino population right now, 71% of them came after the easing of the immigration laws. Of the immigrants who arrived between 1965 to 1977, at least 85% are professionals.

In 1960, the median education level was 9.7 years, and it went up to 13 years in 1990. Also, 39% 0f Filipinos over the age of 25 have bachelor’s degrees or higher.

Filipinos have been in America for a long time. They’ve helped preserve this nation ever since the beginning. Filipinos in the New Orleans area helped fight with the French and the U.S against the British in the War of 1812. Yet, the rise of economic power of Filipinos did not come from respect for them from Americans, but rather, immigration. The big growth of Filipino economy in America is from the education in the Philippines.

Information acquired from Filipinas magazine, October 1994.
by John Yap, May 1996