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Philippine Diaspora
Robert Lawless
OVERVIEW
The e m i g r a t i o n of Filipinos f r o m their h o m e l a n d has a
long history, but Philippine m i g r a t i o n can be discussed
c o n v e n i e n t l y in terms of periods and waves" the prehis-
toric period, the Spanish period, the U.S. period, w h i c h
consists of four waves, and the global period. The first
Philippine Diaspora
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(Ed.), PaIestinian refugees, the right of return (pp. 71-76).
London: Pluto Press.
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(Ed.), Palestinian refugees, the right of return (pp. 1-6). London:
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London: Zed Press.
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http ://www.un.org/unrwa/publication s/stati s-01 .html
Zahlan, A. B., & Zahlan, R. S. (1977). The Palestinian future: Education
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Zureik, E. (1978). PaIestinians in Israel: A study in internal colonial-
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Zureik, E. (1997). Palestinian refugees and the peace process [in
Arabic]. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies.
period w o u l d no d o u b t include prehistoric e m i g r a t i o n out
of the Philippine A r c h i p e l a g o to n e a r b y islands and the
m a i n l a n d of A s i a and Sout heast Asia. Unfortunately, no
reliable d o c u m e n t a t i o n of these mi grat i ons exists.
B y 1572 a substantial part of the Philippines was
u n d e r Spani sh control, and the islands r e m a i n e d a
Spanish colony until the U n i t e d States took over following
Filipinos in the United States
the 1898 to 1902 Spanish-American war. During the
Spanish period Filipinos immigrated along the Spanish
trade and exploration routes primarily to what are now
Guam and Mexico, though little documentation of these
migrations exists. Also, no doubt, Filipinos continued to
immigrate to nearby islands, especially from the southern
parts of the archipelago to what is now Indonesia.
Reliable documentation begins in 1902 after the
United States established control over most of the
Philippines. The first wave of the U.S. period consisted of
farm workers and students, and by 1940 more than
98,000 Filipinos were in the United States. Due to the
inclusion in 1934 of Filipinos in the category of excluded
Asians, there was very little Philippine immigration into
the United States from 1934 until after World War II.
The second wave occurred between 1946 and 1965,
with Philippine immigrants having access to naturalized
U.S. citizenship. The first Philippine professionals
arrived on this wave and the first generation of children of
Philippine immigrants came to maturity. By 1970 the
U.S. census listed 336,731 Filipinos (Staff, 1973, p. 119).
With the elimination in 1965 of national origin quotas the
immigration of Philippine professionals and family mem-
bers greatly increased, and this third wave resulted in
large Philippine communities in urban areas. The fourth
wave can be dated from the Immigration Act of 1990,
which doubled the number of Filipinos admitted on the
basis of needed skills.
Despite the close relationship of Philippine migra-
tion dynamics to U.S. migration needs and policies,
Filipinos can now be found in most parts of the world.
Focusing on this last period, the global period, I estimate
that currently more than 8 million Filipinos reside in
more than 160 countries other than the Philippines. More
than one-fourth of these are in the United States. The July
2002 estimated population of the Philippines was
84,525,639 (CIA, 2003). The population, then, of Filipinos
currently living overseas is almost 9.5% of the total popu-
lation of the Philippines.
FILIPINOS IN THE UNITED STATES
Initial Contacts with North America
The first contact of Filipinos with what would become the
United States springs from the Spanish period and is
245
traditionally believed to be by Philippine members of the
landing party from a Spanish galleon that moored at
Morro Bay, California, on 17 October 1587 (Borah,
1995/1996). The earliest Philippine settlement in what
was to become part of the United States was made as
early as 1765 by the so-called Manila men, who "congre-
gated in the marshlands of Louisiana's Barataria Bay
(about thirty miles south of New Orleans), [and who]
were believed to be descendants of Philippine seamen
who had escaped Spanish galleons--ships that carried
cargoes of luxury goods between the Philippines and
Mexico from 1565 to 1815" (Espiritu, 1995, p. 1). Saint
Malo village was first brought to public attention in 1883
by an article in Harper's Weekly(Hearn, 1883). Members
of the village are believed to have eventually assimilated
into the general population, and the village of Saint Malo
no longer exists (Espina, 1988).
Filipinos in Hawaii, the U.S. West
Coast, and Alaska
When the 1908 "Gentlemen's Agreement" restricted the
migration of Japanese laborers and the 1909 strike by
Japanese plantation workers threatened sugar production,
the planters in Hawaii began importing workers from
the Philippines. Since they had colonial status as U.S.
nationals until 1934, this first wave of Filipinos could
move to the United States unhampered by migration
restrictions. According to one account, between 1907 and
1919, 28,500 Filipinos arrived in Hawaii; between 1920
and 1924, 29,200 arrived (Espiritu, 1995, p. 5). The 1930
census gave the figure of 63,052 Filipinos, or 17.2%
of the population in Hawaii. From 1910 to 1940 the
Filipino-American population in Hawaii grew from 2,361
to 52,569. In Hawaii, as a scholar reports,
The different ethnic groups were assigned into different types of work.
Usually, those of European background, called 'haoles,' took manage-
ment positions and the Spanish and Portuguese were appointed as lunas,
plantation overseers. Technical and mechanical jobs were held by the
Japanese. The Filipinos got the lowest jobs---of being the ordinary
laborers in the field---doing the dirtiest jobs. (Bautista, 1998, p. 122)
During the same time period (1910 to 1940) the
Philippine population on the U.S. mainland grew from
406 to 45,876 (Kitano & Daniels, 1995, p. 87). These
246
early Philippine immigrants primarily went to California
as migrant farm workers, and some went to the canneries
in Washington, Oregon, and especially Alaska. On the
West Coast the Philippine immigrants consisted primarily
of migrant farm laborers who had no permanent resi-
dence, and therefore most of them were men without
families. In the 1920s and 1930s the ratio of men to
women was typically 20 to 1, and in some places at some
times, 40 to 1. (In contrast, Philippine families were more
likely to be found in Hawaii than elsewhere because the
husbands could work in a stable plantation community.)
Since most of these early pioneers came from the
Ilokos coast on the west side of northern Luzon, these
early Philippine immigrants and workers became known
as manong, the Iloko word for "brother." Most of them
planned only to accumulate wealth and return to the
Philippines as rich men, but instead they often found
themselves deep in debt to the company store.
Carlos Bulosan's (1946) American Is in the Heart is
a superb piece of literature portraying the struggles and
successes of these early Philippine migrants from the
perspective of a Filipino immigrant from a lower-class,
rural background. Bulosan's experiences can be compared
with those of Manuel J. Buaken (1948), a professional
from a privileged background, who wrote I Lived with
Americans (1948). Other insights into this period can be
found in three large collections on Filipinos in Hawaii, the
Hawaii State Library Hawaiian collection, the University
of Hawaii's Hawaiian and Pacific collections, and the
University of Hawaii's Hamilton Library collection.
A summary of early Filipinos in Alaska states,
In 1930, 15% of all workersin Alaska's fisheries were Filipinos. These
Alaskeros, as they were called, cleaned salmon and packed them in
boxes, working six days a week, from six o'clock in the morning until
six o'clock at night .... After the [seven-month]fishing season was over,
the Alaskeros returned to Seattle or San Francisco. Usually, they were
disappointed to find that they had not actually made much money,
because their employers subtracted large amounts from their wages to
pay for their food and other expenses in Alaska. (Takaki, 1995,p. 34)
The pioneering Philippine immigrants suffered the
prejudice and discrimination that the bigotry of the times
imposed. Particularly offensive were the antimiscegena-
tion laws that were common in the western states before
World War II. There were also a number of "race" riots
aimed primarily at Filipinos, particularly in California,
Philippine Diaspora
with the best-known one happening in 1930 in
Watsonville, California. One result of the prevailing xeno-
phobia was the passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act in
1934, which promised independence to the Philippine
colony after a period of 10 years. The act also immediately
changed the status of Filipinos from U.S. nationals
to Philippine citizens of the U.S. Commonwealth and
made them subject to exclusionary immigration measures,
effectively ending the first wave of migration. Since
Philippine immigration was limited to only 50 annually
per year, very few Filipinos migrated to the United States
between 1934 and 1946.
Two later pieces of U.S. legislation had a significant
impact on Philippine immigration and created the second
wave of migration. The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952
eased restrictions on Philippine immigration and also
provided for the nonquota immigration of relatives of
Filipino-Americans. The Immigration and Nationality
Act of 1965 raised the annual quota for Filipinos from
100 to 20,000 and ended the second wave of migration.
Between 1966 and 1975, 114,107 Filipinos immigrated to
the United States (Bonus, 2000, p. 44). After 1965 most
of the Philippine immigrants were professionals and fam-
ily members of these professionals. After 1975 Filipinos
comprised the second largest group of immigrants, after
Mexicans, coming to the United States. This number is
increasing as a result of the Immigration Act of 1990,
which doubled the number of Filipinos admitted, and
which can be said to have resulted in the fourth wave of
Philippine immigration into the United States.
Filipinos are found in every state in the United States.
As I pointed out, "Since hospitals and other employment
opportunities for professionals are most frequently located
in urban areas, the new wave of Philippine immigration has
splashed over from the traditional farming areas of Hawaii
and California and settled down to form a pool of urban
professionals" (Lawless, 1982, p. 32).
In California "metropolitan areas with sizable
Filipino populations include Los Angeles-Long Beach,
San Francisco-Oakland, and San Diego, Honolulu, and
Chicago. Daly City, which is about 15 miles south of
San Francisco, is especially recognized as a Filipino
American community" (Okamura, 1998, p. 35). Rick
Bonus provides an ethnography of Filipinos in Southern
California based on fieldwork conducted in Los Angeles
and San Diego Counties between 1992 and 1995. In the
Filipinos in the United States
1990 census San Diego County had 96,000 Filipinos; Los
Angeles County had 220,000. The study focused "on
commercial establishments (particularly, Filipino
'Oriental' stores), social halls, community centers, and
media (specifically Filipino community newspapers) as
sites where Filipino Americans publicly construct their
ethnic identifies" (Bonus, 2000, p. ix).
The differing waves of Philippine immigrants resulted
in a fragmentation and disorganization of Philippine-
American communities (Yu, 1980). The notion of waves
also can be seen in class differences. In the Filipino-
American community in Wichita, Kansas, there is, for
example, a fairly coherent community of Philippine wives
of European-American U.S. citizens who were introduced
to their husbands through international matchmaking
agencies or through a network of kin and friends of these
wives and who socialize together, and there is another
community of professionals who appear together on
committees formed by, for example, the Wichita Asian
Association. These two groups rarely cross paths, and if
they do, the professionals show a clear disdain for mem-
bers of the other group, while the other group exhibits a
certain amount of deference for the professionals. These
encounters occur primarily in the one Philippine food
store in the city and in some of the several Asian groceries.
Cooperation between the two groups is limited to selecting
Miss Philippines to participate in the Miss Asia beauty
pageant held annually at the Wichita Asian Festival.
Beauty pageants are, indeed, an important part of the
culture in the Philippines, though their carryover into the
United States has been largely limited to their transformation
into fund-raising events (Bonus, 2000, pp. 114-127).
Philippine Students
In addition to the workers, a second type of early
Philippine immigrant to the United States during the first
wave consisted of men and women of the educated class
who came as pensionados, "government scholars." The
colonial attitude of the policy makers toward their newly
acquired territory suggested the necessity of developing a
class of Filipinos that would be able to become the civil
servants of an Asian democracy. The Pensionado Act of
1903 declared that qualified Philippine students could
further their education in the United States at the expense
of the colonial government. In the colonial government
247
and later in the commonwealth government pensionados
had considerable prestige and also access to positions in
the Philippine government. The first group of 103
government-sponsored students sailed from Manila to the
United States in October 1903 (Espiritu, 1995, p. 3).
Members of this first group were from the privileged
classes, but as the U.S. colonial education system of free
and compulsory schooling spread throughout the
Philippines, many of the later pensionados came from
families that were not necessarily wealthy.
By the 1920s many Filipinos studying in the United
States were not pensionados, but were either having their
schooling funded by a wealthy family or were self-support-
ing from a variety of jobs. Some came on independent schol-
arships offered by various universities wanting to diversify
their student population. With growing nationalistic atti-
tudes in the Philippines, starting perhaps during the 21-year
regime of President Ferdinand Marcos, an education in the
United States was not necessarily regarded as prestigious.
Some of these returning students are thought to have a
condescending attitude toward their fellow countrymen.
U.S. Census Data
The definition of Philippine migrants can be somewhat
problematic; there are second-, third-, and fourth-generation
Filipinos who may have blended culturally with their
adopted countries, there are Philippine nationals living
outside the Philippines permanently or temporarily, there
are ethnic Filipinos who are citizens of other countries,
and there are successive generations of Filipinos who
have married members of other ethnic groups. The 2000
census of the United States approaches this problem with
a method of self-reporting identities.
The Census 2000 Brief on The Asian Population:
2000 issued by the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2002
declared that the population of the United States on
1 April 2000 was 281.4 million. Of that, 4.2% or
11.9 million people, reported themselves as Asian.
Included in this number were 10.2 million people who
reported themselves as only Asian and 1.7 million people
who reported themselves as some sort of combination
with Asian. The report points out, "Data have been
collected on the Chinese population since the 1860 cen-
sus and on the Japanese population since the 1870 census.
The racial classification was expanded in the 1910
248
census to obtain separate figures on other groups such as
Filipinos and Koreans" (Barnes & Bennett, 2002, p. 2).
A significant change in the 2000 census concerns the fact
that in previous censuses the respondents self-identified
with only one "race," whereas in the 2000 census respon-
dents were asked to report one or more "races" that they
identified themselves with. Therefore, data on "race"
from the 2000 census are not easily comparable with data
from previous censuses. For example, based on the two
categories of "Asian alone" or "Asian in combination,"
the Asian population increased by 48% to 72% between
1990 and 2000, while the total population grew by 13%
(Barnes & Bennett, 2002, p. 3).
The largest Asian group was the Chinese, with a
total of 2.7 million people. Filipinos were the next
largest group, with 1.9 million people reporting Filipino
alone and an additional 0.5 million reporting Filipino in
combination, giving a total of 2.4 million people. The
next-largest group was Asian Indians, with a total of
1.9 million reporting Indian alone or in combination
(Barnes & Bennett, 2002, p. 8).
There is, no doubt, a certain number of Philippine
immigrants who are undocumented. They may be visi-
tors, tourists, or students with expired visas, or seamen
who have stayed in port. I know of no accurate study that
gives reliable figures (see Montoya, 1997).
Geographically the distribution of Asian groups rather
closely follows that of Filipinos, with 51% of the Asian
population living in California, New York, and Hawaii:
California, by far, had the largest Asian population (4.2 million), fol-
lowedby NewYork(1.2 million), and Hawaii (.7 million).The ten states
with the largest Asian population and also with the largest Philippine
population were California, New York, Hawaii, Texas, New Jersey,
Illinois, Washington, Florida, Virginia, and Massachusetts. (Barnes &
Bennett, 2002, p. 4)
The highest percentage of Asian populations and also of
the Philippine population occurred in Hawaii, with 58%
Asian, and California, with 12% Asian (Barnes &
Bennett, 2002, p. 4).
DESTINATIONS OTHER THAN THE
UNITED STATES
The global period of Philippine migration is less well
documented than the U.S. period, but the studies that do
PhilippineDiaspora
exist suggest that Filipinos are having a significant
impact worldwide.
Providing statistical and ethnographic descriptions
of Philippine communities in Canada, Anita Beltran
Chen's (1998) From Sunbelt to Snowbelt: Filipinos in
Canada is an important addition to the literature on
Filipinos in North America. Until 1962 racist immigration
policies limited the number of "nonwhite" immigrants to
Canada, but after 1962 these racist policies were changed
to a needs-based system. Since then, Filipinos have been
arriving in Canada in growing numbers, settling mostly in
Toronto and Vancouver. The first wave of immigrants
consisted mainly of nurses. In the 1970s Canada admitted
mostly women factory workers for the garment industry,
and from the mid 1980s through the 1990s, mostly female
workers (Chen, 1998).
In November 1997, 120 delegates, representing 75
migrant organizations from 14 countries in Europe, and
10 representatives of migrant support organizations and
nongovernmental organizations from the Philippines met
in Athens to address the issue of migrants fights for
equality and participative development in Europe and the
Philippines. It was revealed that Philippine immigrants in
Europe numbered approximately 500,000, with 80% of
them being women. In addition, an estimated 300,000
Philippine seafarers, representing about 20% of total
world seafarers, were employed primarily on European-
owned ships. Other common occupations in Europe
included the professional and service sectors, domestic
workers and au pairs, oil-fig workers, nurses and health
workers, religious and church workers, entertainers, and
students. Some of these migrants trace their presence in
Europe back to the nineteenth century when Philippine
patriots were exiled to Spain. Most of the immigrants,
however, came to Europe starting in the 1960s. This
immigration peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, though
substantial numbers of Filipinos have continued to immi-
grate to Europe into the 2000s. Outside the United States
and Canada probably the best-paying jobs for Philippine
migrants are in Europe. To get a comparative figure, the
most recent estimates are from 1996, when total remit-
tances in U.S. dollars were estimated at seven billion,
approximately two billion of which was remitted from
Europe (Staff, 1997). In a household survey, Tacoli
(1996) concentrates on the remittances from Philippine
domestic workers in Rome.
Diaspora and the Homeland
In an article about Filipinas in Australia, Holt (1996)
discusses the stereotypes perpetrated by Australian writers
and the mass media that reflect the racism of Australia. In a
rare article on conditions in Brunei Darussalam, Mani
(1996) reports that a sample survey of domestic workers
shows many of them staying briefly in Bruneian society and
then moving to other destinations. Despite the importance of
the Middle East in the Philippine diaspora, relatively little
has been written about that area, though Philippine
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo visited Kuwait in April
2003 to express her gratitude and appreciation to overseas
Philippine workers. By the early 1980s the Middle East
experienced an increased demand for skilled and semi-
skilled workers, which was filled largely by Filipinos. These
particular overseas workers expected to remain only tem-
porarily in the Middle East, and they were clearly confined
to marginal positions due to their lack of skills in the indige-
nous language and their difference in culture and religion.
Immigration to neighboring Asian countries is
significant. Hing (1996) discusses the organization of
Philippine domestic workers in the growth of labor organi-
zations in Singapore. Unfortunately there is relatively
little written on Filipinos in Malaysia or Indonesia, but
there is significant information on Philippine immigrants
in Hong Kong, and Japan. In her study in Hong Kong,
Nicole Constable writes, "To some the term 'Filipino,'
has become synonymous with 'domestic worker'" (1997,
p. 39). Indeed as middle-class Chinese women entered the
Hong Kong work force beginning in the late 1970s, the
need for domestic workers increased. At the time of
Constable's study approximately 150,000 people served
on two-year domestic worker contracts with the great
majority being Philippine women (Constable, 1997, p. 65).
In contrast to the women in the low-paying, low-pres-
tige jobs who are the focus of Constable's book, Lorna
Kalaw-Tirol (2000) edited a book of 19 autobiographies of
overseas Filipinas in highly visible and high-prestige posi-
tions, including a nursing director in Saudi Arabia, an
information technology expert working for the government
of Canada, a nuclear safeguards inspector in Austria, a
writer and teacher in California, an obstetrician-gynecolo-
gist to Chicago's unwed mothers, a childcare program
consultant in Chicago, a diplomat in Geneva, a visual artist
in Paris, a missionary nun in Cameroon, an animal fights
activist in North Carolina, a translator of Philippine books
in France, an editor for a Philippine workers' magazine in
249
Hong Kong, the CEO of a major U.S. multinational
company, a development consultant in Rome, a translator
and interpreter in Chile, a yoga teacher and entrepreneur in
Boston, an advocate of women's human fights in Eastern
Europe, a television broadcaster in Singapore, and a
community development activist in Chicago.
Nobue Suzuki did ethnographic fieldwork between
May 1993 and July 1999 with more than 100 Filipina wives
in the Tokyo metropolitan area, joining several groups of
Filipinas (2000, p. 432). She points out that Filipinas in
Japan were first regarded as sex workers, then later came to
fill the needs of rural areas of Japan that were suffering the
effect of a "bride famine" as previously oppressed Japanese
mothers "encouraged their own daughters to leave commu-
nities for paid employment and subsequent marriage in
cities" (Suzuki, 2002b, p. 180). In 1979 the number of
Filipina immigrants to Japan exceeded 10,000 for the first
time (Suzuki, 2002b, p. 177). "The first group of six
Filipina hanayome [brides] ... arrived in 1985, and these
marriages are considered the first batch of administratively
mediated 'international marriages' in depopulated commu-
nities" (Suzuki, 2002b, p. 181). "Filipina-Japanese mar-
riages occupied first place among all filed intermarriages in
Japan between 1992 and 1996" (Suzuki, 2002a, p. 102).
While in 1986 the world was celebrating the first
woman president of the Philippines, Corazon C. Aquino,
a Japanese journalist was coining the word Japayuki,
which is used in Japan to identify Filipinas as prostitutes.
A few months later Filipinas in Japan organized the
Philippine Women's League of Japan, whose main
purpose was to counter the blighted image that the
Japanese media projected of Filipinas (Staff, 2003). This
organization also lambasted Philippine officials "for their
failure to address properly the unemployment problem,
politicians back home have resorted to flattering the egos
of Filipino workers stranded abroad with such accolades
as 'unsung heroes,' 'saints,' etc. even when many of them
are ending up in foreign jails" (Staff, 2003). (See the
entry Filipinos in Japan in this work.)
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE
DIASPORA AND THE HOMELAND
The Philippine government has certainly not ignored the
importance of the Philippine diaspora. On 9 March 2003,
250
President Macapagal-Arroyo led the Philippines in pay-
ing tribute to the eight million or so overseas Philippine
workers and their families in celebrating the seventeenth
National Migrants Sunday. The Overseas Workers
Welfare Administration (OWWA), operating under the
Philippine government's Department of Labor and
Employment, has a mandate to provide welfare assistance
to registered overseas workers and their dependents. With
the promulgation of the Migrant Workers and the Filipino
Act of 1995, the OWWA is expected to expand its
services. The duties of the OWWA include the protection
and promotion of the welfare of overseas workers and
their dependents, the facilitation and implementation of
the provisions of the Philippine labor code, the provision
of cultural and entertainment programs, and the develop-
ment of studies of the overseas workers. The OWWA has
programs for chattel mortgages, loan packages, legal
assistance, repatriation of workers, airport assistance,
insurance coverage, skills development workshops, and
scholarships. It maintains offices in Bahrain, Brunei,
Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait,
Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Saipan, Saudi
Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, the United Arab
Emirates, and the United States (Overseas Workers
Welfare Organization, 2003).
PUSH-PULL FACTORS
To use the somewhat antiquated terms of the push-pull
model, professionals from the Philippines often come to
the United States primarily because of "push" rather than
"pull" factors. The conclusion in 1976 of the scholar
Ernesto Pernia still stands today, that the problem of the
so-called "brain drain .... stems from the basic inability of
[the Philippine] economy to absorb the ... domestic sup-
ply of professionals, especially physicians, scientists, and
engineers" (1976, p. 71). Certainly after President
Marcos declared martial law in 1972 and ruled as a dicta-
tor, Filipinos were more anxious than usual to escape the
impoverishment of the country. Indeed, Marcos's policies
encouraged the emigration of Filipinos in an effort to
ease unemployment and bring remittances back into the
country. Close to 500,000 Filipinos left for overseas
employment during the 15 years of martial law from
1972 to 1986. In 1998 the Philippine economy rapidly
Philippine Diaspora
deteriorated due to the Asian financial crisis, and although
it began to recover in late 1999, prospects for the future
are heavily dependent on the economic performance of the
United States and Japan.
Pull factors influence the type of immigrants that
come into the host countries. Unlike, say, India, which
exports primarily professionals, or Mexico, which
exports primarily unskilled laborers, Philippine immi-
grants cover an exceptionally wide range from agricul-
tural workers to engineers, domestic workers to teachers,
entertainers to professors, mail-order brides to computer
specialists, nurses to bricklayers, and seafarers to stenog-
raphers. The pull factors of the national market, then,
have less influence on Philippine migration than they
might have on other groups in the diaspora.
REMITTANCES
According to an article in the Manila Star, "An average of
2,748 Filipinos leave the country each day for jobs
overseas, the Department of Labor and Employment said
yesterday," an increase over the average of 2,551 depamtres
registered in the same period in the previous year (Vanzi,
2002). The same article pointed out that Filipinos working
overseas remitted $6.23 billion to the Philippines in 2001, a
3.05% increase from 2000. Data from the Philippine
Overseas Employment Administration showed that 280,882
overseas Philippine workers left for jobs abroad after being
hired or rehired during the first quarter of 2002. According
to the International Monetary Fund, worldwide remittances
totaled $2 billion in 1970; by 2000, the International
Labor Organization set that figure at $7.3 billion.
The approximately eight million overseas Filipinos
remit about US$8 billion, and returning Filipinos bring in
about US$8 billion more in cash and in kind. The
Philippines weathered the 1990s downturn in the Asian
economies better than their neighbors largely due to
the benefits of emigration and remittances. Indeed, the
US$8 billion is 10% of the current total Philippine gross
national product of about US$80 billion. According to
one study, "By the end [of the 1980s], the islands
depended more than any other nation on the remittances
of those members of its population that it had 'exported,'
many of them to the Persian Gulf, Singapore, and Japan"
(Posadas, 1999, pp. 10-11).
Balikbayan
BALIKBAYAN
Filipinos returning to the Philippines as visitors and
tourists are referred to as balikbayan, a combination
of the Tagalog words balik, meaning "to return," and
bayan, meaning "a settlement." As a Filipino-American
researcher points out,
The term joins the Tagalog words balik (to return) and bayan (town, and
at least from the late nineteenth century on, nation). As a balikbayan,
one's relationship to the Philippines is construed in terms of one's senti-
mental attachments to one's hometown, extended family, and ethnic
group rather than one's loyalty to the nation-state. At the same time,
being a balikbayan depends on one's permanent residence abroad.
(Rafael, 2000, p. 206).
President Marcos established Operation Homecoming in
1973 with the intent of encouraging Filipino-Americans
to return and see the improvements made under martial
law. It was naturally expected that they would also return
with money to spend in the Philippines. Under Philippine
policies they received such favorable treatment as easily
obtainable visas, lower air fares, and speedy service
through immigration and customs.
This balikbayan program has been continued
beyond the Marcos regime and is in full swing in the
2000s. During the Christmas holiday season, which tradi-
tionally begins on 16 December and lasts until the first
Sunday in January, the Ninoy Aquino International
Airport in Manila is packed with balikbayans and their
welcoming relatives and friends. At other times of the
year balikbayans visit their hometowns to attend the
annual fiesta. Many of these towns sponsor receptions for
the balikbayans with banquets, entertainment, official
speakers, and often individual recognition of the benefits
that balikbayans have brought back to their hometown.
As Jonathan Y. Okamura states,
Returnees invariably bring with them a wide assortment of consumer
goods intended as ... gifts for relatives and friends in appropriately
called 'balikbayan boxes.' These bulging cardboard boxes ... hold
expensive, western-made products such as designer clothes, compact
disc players, video cassette recorders, and basketball shoes. (Okamura,
(1998, p. 123)
In fact, an entire industry has grown around the
balikbayan program and the balikbayan boxes.
Depending on the search engine, a request for Internet
sites containing the words balikbayan box will return
251
about 1,200 sites, many of them offering services in sev-
eral languages. A company named Manila Forwarders,
for example, advertises,
All packing materials and cartons are of the best quality. All china, glass
and crystal will be individually wrapped prior to packing. Cartons will
be taped across top, bottom and all sides. All rugs and carpets will be
rolled and wrapped .... All items which are not suitable for packing will
be padded for transport. These items include furniture items, large bulky
pieces and large appliances. (Manila Forwarder, 2003)
In addition, in 1986 the Philippine government created
the Philippine Retirement Authority to generate foreign
exchange. The authority is mandated primarily to promote
and develop the Philippines as a retirement haven for for-
eign nationals and overseas Filipinos. The privileges
include a multiple-entry visa with the fight to permanent
residence in the Philippines, one-time exemption from cus-
toms duties and taxes, and tax-free pensions and annuities
remitted to the Philippines. According to the regulations,
All foreign nationals below 50 and at least 35 years of age are required
to deposit the amount of US$75,000 with any PRA [Philippine
Retirement Authority] shortlisted banks. Those aged 50 and above are
required to deposit US$50,000. Former citizens of the Philippines
are required to deposit US$1,500. (Philippine Retirement Authority,
Republic of the Philippines, 2003)
The research on those who retire in the Philippines
or those who return to the Philippines to stay permanently
is scant. In an article that focused on the experiences of
one Philippine physician returning to the Philippines after
six years of internship in an American hospital (Lawless,
1982), I discussed her first year home and her interactions
with her family of orientation, her peer group, and her
medical colleagues.
This research concentrated on the experiences of
one person in the new wave of Philippine immigrants,
who were largely professionals, and in this case a foreign
medical graduate. What I wrote then about the immigration
of physicians still characterizes the situation:
Licensing practices and hospital vacancies encourage migration of
Filipinos to Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
While the cities in Hawaii and California continued to attract the largest
number of Philippine immigrants (because of their proximity to the
Philippines, their warm climate, and their well-established Philippine
communities), Chicago and New York City had the next largest
increases. (Lawless, 1982, p. 32)
252
FILIPINOS IN CYBERSPACE
There are Philippine web sites all over the Internet, rang-
ing from recipe sites to regional history lessons, from
personal to business to online Philippine-American litera-
ture, from music to technology, and from photography
to news. For example, the Philippine News (http://
philippinenews.com) is an online newspaper giving up-
to-date news primarily about happenings in the United
States. Global Online Filipino (http://globalonlinefilipino.
com) gives breaking news, links, photographs, and online
discussions about overseas Filipinos. Amazon.
com carries a section titled "The Filipino and Filipino-
American Cyber-Library," which features Philippine
fiction, poetry, languages, history, ethnic studies, martial
arts, and children's literature and games. The Pinoy First
web site (http://pinoyfirst.com) has just about everything
anyone would want to know about Filipinos and Filipino-
Americans in the North America. There is even a web site
about Filipinos in Diego Garcia (http://community.
webshots.com/user/joelgonzales 1). One can find 3,000 to
4,000 sites by searching for "Philippine/Filipino dias-
pora," and from 13,000 to 15,000 sites using "Pinoy" as
the key word.
Ken Ilio, a Filipino-American who is probably best
known for his web site on Philippine food (2003), has
significantly contributed to the development of the
Internet in the Philippines and among the Philippine dias-
pora. Several notorious Internet viruses were developed
by Filipinos, but also early forms of Internet communica-
tion in 1986 played an important role in organizing the
overthrow of President Marcos. Ilio points out that
"Filipino web pages run the gamutmpersonal, profes-
sional, crude, divine, beautiful, ugly, massive and extensive
or ambitious ...---covering every imaginable topic, not
only about the Philippines but about everything under the
sun" (Ilio, 2000).
IDENTITY
Although I doubt that many overseas Filipino and
Filipino-Americans spend much time in anguish over
their identity, certain members of the Philippine intellec-
tual elite, more deracinated than in-country, engage in a
considerable amount of self-conscious hand wringing
Philippine Diaspora
about their imagined identity crisis. Most of these protes-
tations are expressed in postmodernish idioms. For exam-
ple, one writer states, "For Filipino Americans attuned to
their own feelings of inferiority and alienation, debates
on how to construct empowered ethnic identities lead to
questions about decolonizing the mind" (Castro, 2000).
Another writer states, almost incomprehensibly,
"Without understanding the complex process of colonial
subjugation and the internalization of dependency,
Filipinos will not be able to define their own specific
existential trajectory here [in the United States] as a
dynamic bifurcated formation" (San Juan, 1998, p. 13).
These approaches reflect more a concern with literary
fashion than with reality.
In contrast, the reality is that the identity of
Filipinos, both in the Philippines and overseas, focuses
first and foremost on the family and secondarily on the
ethnic group, with little to no confusion among Filipinos
themselves. The several ethnic groups speak mutually
unintelligible languages, and I estimate that more than
90% of first-generation Filipino-Americans speak one of
eight languages. When interacting with each other for the
first time, they generally begin speaking in English (the
language most often used as a second language), switch
to Tagalog (the Philippine language most often used as a
second language), and then, perhaps detecting an accent
in the Tagalog, ask the ethnic affiliation of the other per-
son. If they are from the same ethnic group, they immedi-
ately switch to their mother tongue and establish where
their hometowns are. This linguistic behavior clearly
illustrates that Filipinos identify with their ethnic group
rather than with the Philippine nation. Thus, they are per-
fectly comfortable with their ethnic identities, though
they may not be the nationalistic Filipinos that the literary
elite want them to be.
Due to the fragmentation of these ethnic groups,
second-generation Filipino-Americans rarely speak any
Philippine language and often seem oblivious to the
history and culture of their parents' country. Few have
any knowledge of the worldwide contributions that
Filipinos have made in sports, science, and entertainment.
Moreover, although Filipinos are the fastest-growing Asian
population in the United States (and by 2004 may have
overtaken the Chinese as the largest Asian population),
Philippine characters do not appear in television shows and
on film as do Japanese-Americans, Korean-Americans,
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nity consciousness, powered by the Internet, may, how-
ever, soon result in changes that will bring the overseas
Philippine community to the attention of the world.
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