Pinoys in America

This 12 September 2010 front page of the California newspaper below says it all: California runs on the sweat, blood and tears of immigrants.  State Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, the body building champion from Graz in Austria, rose from being a Hollywood megastar to become the duly-elected California's head honcho.

Among these 9.8 million Californian immigrants were Filipinos, and are now Fil-Ams, but the same Pinoys like the countrymen they left behind in the other side of the globe.

"There were about 1.7 million foreign born from the Philippines residing in the United States in 2008," wrote Aaron Terrazas and Jeanne Batalova (April 2010) of the Migration Policy Institute, "and nearly half of the Filipino born resided in California."   Interesting information about the Filipino Immigrants in the United States from these authors are at the end of this article, and the details can be accessed through this hyperlink. 

The first documented immigrants were the "Luzones Indios" who landed in Morro Bay, California on October 18, 1587.  Almost 200 years later in 1763, the  first permanent settlement of Filipinos was set up in St. Malo Parish in Louisina. In 2006, the centennial of the first wave of Pinoy migrants -Ilokanos - recruited to work in the farms in Hawaii was commemorated with, among other events, a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution called Singgalot: The Ties That Bind about "the rich history of Filipinos in America, honoring early immigrant pioneers and the determined generations who came after them."

California was the crucible of Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart, which was about the pain and anguish of the Pinoys who struggled against discrimination in the fruit plantations and the canneries in Alaska. In 2002, this was distilled by Lonnie Carter into a play--Romance of Magno Rubio--and staged at the Ma-Yi Company Theater off-Broadway in New York City, and a Pilipino translation of it at the Cultural Center of the Phillippines in 2004.

Since we are a very frequent visitor of San Francisco, we've seen both the then and now presence of the Filipino character in California, from the ghosts of Jose Rizal in the Palace Hotel on Montgomery St, of the founding caballeros of the masonic lodges, and of the fallen defenders of the 1st Philippine Republic among the trophies of the Fil-Am war in the Presidio, to the stoic senior citizen guides in the SFo MoMA, the Pilipino-speaking sales people in Old Navy and other boutiques, the World War 2 veterans waiting in line for their food subsidies at the Bayahihan Center or huddling at McDo on Market St, and the homeless Pinoys on Mission St.   Always every Sunday, St Francis Church on Mission is the meeting house of Pinoys in San Francisco.  And in December, the Philippine parols of various design and color come out in festive procession to say that Philippine Christmas is alive and well-kept among the Pinoy families in America! 

It's no wonder then that Filipino visitors from the Philippines would immediately feel at home as soon as their planes land in San Francisco or Los Angeles; tt's as if they've just slept for twelve hours and woke to find themselves still in Manila now teeming with foreigners. They see brown skin as they pass through Homeland Security into the waiting areas; hear typical Philippine dialect accents on the streets, groceries, department stores, museums, wherever; smell the whiff of Pinoy condiments in restaurants and parties hosted by their friends or friends of friends; and since there are so many Pinoy migrants from particular sitios, barrios and towns in the Philippines, attend a California edition of fiestas organized to coincide with festivities back home.

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Key Information Points from Filipino Immigrants in the United States (Terrazas and Batalova, 2010) based on data gathered from US Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey (ACS) and 2000 Decennial Census, and the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) for 2008:

"Size and Distribution

• There were about 1.7 million foreign born from the Philippines residing in the United States in 2008.
• Nearly half of the Filipino born resided in California.
• The Filipino born accounted for a large share of all immigrants in Western states.
• Between 2000 and 2008, three states saw the size of their Filipino immigrant population grow by 25,000 people or more.
• More than one-third of Filipino immigrants resided in three metropolitan areas.
• Filipinos were two of every five immigrants in Honolulu.
• There were 2.9 million members of the Filipino diaspora residing in the United States in 2008, including 1.4 million native-born US citizens of Filipino ancestry.

"Demographic and Socioeconomic Overview

• Over one-quarter of all Filipino foreign born in the United States arrived in 2000 or later.
• Almost two-thirds of Filipino immigrants in 2008 were adults of working age.
• Filipino immigrant women outnumbered men in 2008.
• Filipino immigrants were much more likely than other immigrant groups to be naturalized US citizens.
• Less than one-third of Filipino immigrants in 2008 were limited English proficient.
• A minority of limited English proficient Filipinos did not speak Tagalog, one of the national languages of the Philippines.
• Over three-quarters of Filipino foreign-born adults had some college education or higher.
• Filipino immigrant women were more likely to participate in the civilian labor force than foreign-born women overall.
• Almost one-third of employed Filipino-born men worked in health-care support or in construction, extraction, and transportation.
• Nearly one of every four employed Filipino-born women worked as a registered nurse.
• Filipino immigrants were far less likely to live in poverty than other immigrant groups.
• Filipino immigrants were more likely than other immigrants to own their own home, but they were also more likely to have a mortgage.
• One in 10 Filipino immigrants did not have health insurance.
• About 87,000 Filipino immigrants have served in the US Armed Forces.

"Legal and Unauthorized Filipino Immigrant Population

• The Filipino foreign born accounted for about 4.5 percent of all lawful permanent residents living in the United States in 2008.
• More than half a million Filipinos gained lawful permanent residence in the United States between 1999 and 2008.
• Over half of Filipino-born lawful permanent residents in 2008 were admitted as the immediate relatives of US citizens.
• Filipino-born lawful permanent residents made up 3.7 percent of all those eligible to naturalize as of 2008.
• In 2009, 2 percent of all unauthorized immigrants in the United States were from the Philippines.
• The number of unauthorized immigrants from the Philippines increased by one-third between 2000 and 2009." 

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References:

No author. (2009, Sept 10). California declares Filipino American History Month.  San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved from http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/09/07/daily59.html.

Terrazas, A. & Batalova, J. (2010, April). Filipino Immigrants in the United States. Migration Information Source.  Retrieved from the Migration Policy Institute at http://www.migrationinformation.org/USFocus/display.cfm?ID=777.