Chinese and Philippine immigration in America

Chinese and Philippine immigration in America

Introduction

Immigration to North America began with Spanish settlers in the 16th century and French and English settlers in the 17th century. In the century before the American Revolution, there was a major wave of free and indentured labor from England and other parts of Europe as well as large scale importation of slaves from Africa and the Caribbean. Although some level of immigration has been continuous throughout American history, there have been two epochal periods: the 1880 to 1924 Age of Mass Migration, primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe, and the Post 1965 Wave of Immigration, primarily from Latin America and Asia. Each of these eras added more than 25 million immigrants, and the current wave is far from finished. During some of the peak years of immigration in the early 1900s, about one million immigrants arrived annually, which was more than one percent of the total U.S. population at the time. In the early 21st century, there have been a few years with more than one million legal immigrants, but with a total U.S. population of almost 300 million, the relative impact is much less than it was in the early years of the 20th century (Steoff, 1994).

Discussion

Chinese Immigration to the United States

In many respects, the motivations for the Chinese to come to the United States are similar to those of most immigrants. Some came to "The Gold Mountain," and others came to the United States to seek better economic opportunity. Yet there were others that were compelled to leave China either as contract laborers or refugees. The Chinese brought with them their language, culture, social institutions, and customs. Over time they made lasting contributions to their adopted country and tried to become an integral part of the United States population. Chinese immigration can be divided into three periods: 1849-1882, 1882-1965, and 1965 to the present. The first period began shortly after the California Gold Rush and ended abruptly with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. During this period thousands of Chinese, mostly young male peasants, left their villages in the rural countries to become laborers in the American West. They were recruited to extract metals and minerals, construct a vast railroad network, reclaim swamplands, build irrigation systems, work as migrant agricultural laborers, develop the fishing industry, and operate highly-competitive manufacturing industries. At the end of the first period, the Chinese population in the United States was about 110,000 (Alegado, 1996).

Throughout most of the second period (1882-1965), only diplomats, merchants, and students and their dependents were allowed to travel to the United States. Otherwise, throughout this period, Chinese Americans were confined to segregated ghettos, called Chinatowns, in major cities and isolated regions in rural areas across the country. Because the Chinese were deprived of their democratic rights, they made extensive use of the courts and diplomatic channels to defend themselves. The Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, particularly the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of ...