The Legacy of 100 Years of Filipino Immigration

In 1906, the first wave of Filipino immigrants arrived in Hawaii to work as sugarcane plantation contract laborers. Many Filipinos craving for a better life followed suit. By the 1920s, the Filipinos eventually became the largest Asian group in the plantations and more of them came to work in California farms and Alaskan canneries.

The centennial of Filipino migration to the US is more than just a historical landmark for me. I come from Cabugao, a town in Ilocos Sur where practically everyone has a relative or close friend who has immigrated to America during the various waves that followed the arrival of the manongs to the Hawaiian plantations 100 years ago.

My Family’s History

My family’s history is the story of the Filipino immigrant to the US. My grandfather came to America in the 1920s and worked as a railroad track worker. My mother’s brother followed and became sugarcane cutter in Hawaii and later a grape picker in Stockton, California. The husband of my father’s sister arrived and joined the US Army in 1942, and it was through him that my father immigrated. My turn came five decades later.

Life was not easy for the early Filipino immigrants were not easy. Apart from backbreaking manual labor in the fields or in the canneries, the early Filipino immigrants had to deal with hostility and racial prejudice in their adopted home.

The life of my granduncle, Numeriano Seguritan, in America demonstrates the struggle that the manongs went through. Numeriano arrived in the US in 1924 after graduating from Vigan High School . He worked as a grapepicker in California and moved to Seattle for a better, less punishing job. In the winter, he worked in the canneries of Alaska.

A professor took him in as a houseboy and saw him through his college education. Numeriano graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington. As a linguist he studied 17 languages and could speak and write fluently in 9. Despite his sterling credentials, a bachelor’s and later a master’s degree in Languages, he was relegated to manual jobs.

What is significant about my granduncle’s story, however, is not that he had to endure bigotry, but that he and the first Filipino immigrants realized the importance of Filipino unity. He was an active participant in Filipino community activities and was always on the lookout for opportunities to unify and strengthen the Filipino community.

Seeds of Labor Activism

A hundred years ago, the first Filipino immigrants knew that Filipino unity was the key to their empowerment. It bears repeating that even before the Mexican labor leader Cesar Chavez rallied the farm workers of California, the seeds of labor activism were sown by Pablo Manlapit as early as 1911 when he organized the first Filipino labor union in Hawaii to protest the poor agricultural working conditions there.

Manlapit’s Filipino Federation of Labor unified both Filipino and Japanese workers and held a 6-month strike that paralyzed the operations of Hawaiian plantations. Chinese and Portuguese workers joined the strike making it the first inter-ethnic protest action.

In the following decades that saw the Civil Rights movement force America to rethink its position about equality and social justice, Filipino immigrant farm workers like Philip Vera Cruz, Larry Itliong and Pete Velasco organized agricultural laborers of California to clamor for better wages and working conditions. My Uncle Simeon was among the California farm workers who participated in the strike.

I had the privilege of meeting Vera Cruz during the late 1970s. What struck me about him was that Vera Cruz understood deeply the importance of unity and political empowerment in the immigrant’s struggle for social justice in America.

Standing on Their Shoulders

Today, many Americans of Filipino ancestry stand on the shoulders of their immigrant predecessors and are making their mark in America’s vibrant multicultural world of the arts, commerce and finance, sciences and even politics. They enjoy the fruits of the struggles of the manongs for fairness and equity.

Although opportunities that were not available to the early Filipino immigrants are now being enjoyed by this generation, the life of a Filipino immigrant in America is still a struggle.

In a sense the reluctance to welcome immigrants, though not overtly hostile as those experienced by the early Filipino immigrants, continues to pervade American society in one form or another.

Need to Reconnect

For this reason the need to reconnect with our immigrant past and acknowledge the legacy of the manongs must be fulfilled by our generation. We need to do honor the legacy of the manongs by living the lessons of Filipino unity and aiming for the political empowerment of our community.

In addition, Americans of Filipino ancestry and newly-arrived immigrants must realize that individual success would have more meaning and impact if it leads to the political empowerment of the Filipino community.

We can look to the Japanese American example. Though not numerically as strong as the Filipinos, the Japanese Americans have successfully sent several of their own to the august halls of the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the meantime, Filipino Americans who aim for public office have been frustrated by lack of support and worse, opposition from fellow Filipino Americans.

We must learn to take advantage of the electoral processes and political institutions of this great democracy to which we now belong. We must identify potential leaders within the Filipino American community and support them in their bid for public office.

As we start the next century of Filipino immigration, let us widen the impact of our contribution to American society through an empowered Filipino community.