The Filipinos are the second major Asian immigrant collection in the U.S., numbering 1.8 million. Even though they have established in all 50 states, the principal concentrations are found in California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey. At present, they are a pillar of the service industries. Filipinos represented the third wave of immigrants to Hawaii, after the Chinese and Japanese. Because of their status as citizens of a U.S. colony, Filipinos were unchanged by new immigration laws that excluded other Asians. Stuck between 1903 and 1930, more than 125,000 Filipinos were brought over to work on sugar plantations.
Filipinos faced more than a few civil rights struggles for some time. For instance, they were to a great extent exaggerated by anti-miscegenation laws that forbade the marriages between “Mongolians” and Caucasians, even though Filipinos were largely of mixed origins mainly Melayo-Polynesian, Spanish, and Chinese. It was not until 1967 that all anti-miscegenation statutes in the U.S. were removed. Approximately 1,000 Filipinos enter the U.S. each year through the Port of Seattle. While some move on, many remain in the area. Approximately 60% of Filipinos live in King County, while others live in Bremerton and in the Yakima Valley. Today, Filipino Americans make up the largest ethnicity within the APA community and in Washington State and in the nation with over 1.2 million.
Filipino American offerings in the arts, the work association and in affairs of state are remarkable in their obligation to social righteousness and self-governing idealism. For example, Carlos Bulosan, author of America is in the Heart, lived for a time in Seattle. Silme and Nemesio Domingo and Gene Viernes were labor organizers who helped form the Alaska Cannery Workers Association. The highest political officials of Filipino descent are Dolores Sibonga, who served on the Seattle City Council from 1980 to 1992.......
