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Tydings-Mcduffie Act

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, thousands of Filipinos migrated to America.They traveled in ships from Philippine’s capital, Manila, toward the west coast of the United States. The length of the journey by ship was about one month (Bautista). When the Filipino immigrants reached the United States, they established little neighborhoods that were known as “Little Manilas” in cities with large populations. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Washington D.C. all had concentrated populations of Filipinos in neighborhoods. Most of the United States Filipino population, though, was in San Francisco and Seattle since that was where the ships from Manila landed on the west coast (Bookhaus). When Filipinos came, they worked mostly in agriculture. In California and Washington State, Filipinos worked in the fields tending crops. These were mainly jobs that whites didn’t want to do. Filipinos had a different immigration status than Japanese and Chinese. They were known as “nationals” and were given U.S. passports (Bookhaus). There was no legislation against them that prevented them from entering the United States (Bookhaus). That changed in 1934 when the Tydings-Mcduffie Act was passed (Capaa). Tension and hostility was rising against Filipinos at this time, the same tension that arose before the exclusionary laws against the Chinese and then the Japanese. This made the Philippines become an independent country in a ten year period and made it so that only 50 immigrants a year could arrive in the United States every year (Capaa). Now the United States had exclusionary laws against all three immigrant groups. This led the populations to come together and share in the struggle.


Yakima newspaper
10. An angry mob of Americans attacks Filipinos in 1927 (Chin 46).

Sources:

"Filipino Achievers in the USA & Canada." The Main Website of Bookhaus Publishers. Bookhaus. 02 Aug. 2005 <http://www.bookhaus.com/achieve2.html>.

Selected Dates and Events of Asian Pacific American History. CAPAA. 18 Jul. 2005
http://www.capaa.wa.gov/timeline.html