Section 8.1: History and Demographics

Like many groups discussed in this module, Asian Americans represent a great diversity of cultures and backgrounds. The experience of a Japanese American whose family has been in the United States for three generations will be drastically different from a Cambodian American who arrived as a refugee in the 1970s, and even more different from a Laotian American who has only been in the United States for a few years.

Coming to America

Chinese Immigrants

The first Asian immigrants to come to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century were Chinese. These immigrants were primarily men whose intention was to work for several years in order to earn incomes to send back to their families in China (sojourner immigration). Their main destination was the American West, where the Gold Rush was drawing people with its lure of abundant money.

Thousands of (male) Chinese migrants were recruited by the railroad companies to work on the Transcontinental Railroad—a vast, complex, engineering feat to span the continent. The men were responsible for laying the rails across the rugged Sierra Nevada mountain range--the final stretch of tracks that would complete the unprecedented feat. In addition to the railroad, Chinese men also engaged in other manual labor like mining and agricultural work. This work was grueling and underpaid, but like many immigrants, they persevered. By 1887, the Transcontinental Railroad was completed and many of the Chinese workers, having saved the majority of their pay, returned home, or, conversely, began to send for their families—parents, siblings, wives and children, sweethearts, cousins—beginning a steady migration stream from China to the United States. Many of these former railroad workers settled along the West Coast and began to compete, economically, with the white population of the region.

Feeling serious economic pressure from the Chinese immigrants who were willing to work for lower wages, Whites on the West Coast petitioned Congress to stop migration from China. Congress complied and passed a bill titled the “Asian Exclusionary Act.” Chinese immigration came to an abrupt end with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was a result of anti-Chinese sentiment escalated by a depressed economy and loss of jobs. White workers blamed Chinese migrants for taking jobs, and the passage of the Act meant the number of Chinese workers decreased. Chinese men did not have the funds to return to China or to bring their families to the United States, so they remained physically and culturally segregated in the Chinatowns of large cities. 

Japanese Immigrants

Japanese immigration began in the 1880s, on the heels of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Many Japanese immigrants came to Hawaii to work in the sugar industry; others came to the mainland, especially to California. Unlike the Chinese, however, the Japanese had a strong government in their country of origin that negotiated with the U.S. government to ensure the well-being of their immigrants. Japanese men were able to bring their wives and families to the United States, and were thus able to produce second- and third-generation Japanese Americans more quickly than their Chinese counterparts.

Although Japanese Americans have deep, long-reaching roots in the United States, their history here has not always been smooth. For example, the California Alien Land Law of 1913 was aimed at them and other Asian immigrants, and it prohibited aliens from owning land. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans faced incredible individual prejudice and discrimination as well as structural racism in a series of government policies that caused loss of income, wealth, housing, and sometimes, life.  

On December 7, 1941, at 7:55 A.M. local time the Japanese fleet in the South Pacific launched 600 hundred aircraft in a surprise attack against U.S. Naval forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Within four hours, 2,400 people, mostly military personnel had been killed, including the 1,100 men who will be entombed forever in the wreckage of the U.S.S. Arizona when it capsized during the attack. Although this was a military target, the United States was not at war when the attack occurred.

The U.S. response to the attack was segregation via internment camps (or concentration camps). Within 3 months, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed and issue Executive Order 9066 which authorized the secretary of war to prescribe certain areas as military zones, clearing the way for the incarceration of Japanese-descended persons in U.S. concentration camps (German- and Italian-descended persons were also targets of U.S. suspicion however interned at lower rates). In less than six months after the attack, Congress passed the Japanese Relocation Act. As a result, approximately 112,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry (and predominantly on the West Coast) were evicted from their homes and held in American concentration camps and other confinement sites across the country.

Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not incarcerated in the same way, despite the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although the Japanese American population in Hawaii was nearly 40% of the population of Hawaii itself, only a few thousand people were detained there. The fact is that the labor of Japanese Americans in Hawaii was crucial to the economic health of Hawaii which protected them from internment in the prison camps.

Filipino Immigrants

The Philippines were claimed in the name of Spain in 1521 by Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer sailing for Spain, who named the islands after King Philip II of Spain. They were then called Las Felipinas. In 1565, Spanish explorer Miguel López de Legazpi arrived from present-day Mexico (then a Spanish colony) in Cebu (see #19 in map). Soon afterwards, the Captaincy General of the Philippines was governed from "New Spain", the Spanish colony that included Mexico City.

For the next 300 years, the Philippines was a Spanish province. In 1896, the Philippine Revolution began for independence from Spain. The revolution lasted through 1898 when the Spanish–American War broke out. The Spanish–American War resulted in Spain losing its domain over the Philippines and the nation was transferred over to the United States, thus ending the Philippine Revolution. As outlined in the Treaty of Paris (1898), Spain relinquished all claim of sovereignty over and title to Cuba and also ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. The cession of the Philippines involved a compensation of $20 million from the United States to Spain.

The United States would maintain military control of the Philippines until 1946.

During World War II, the Philippines served as a military hub and source of military recruiting for the American military establishment. President Roosevelt created the USAFFE (United States Armed Forces of the Far East) to recruit nearly 250,000 Filipinos who would go on to serve in World War II helping to win the Pacific Theater.  Filipino men who joined the American military were promised full American citizenship as well as benefits typically allotted to military veterans.  When the U.S. claimed victory, it declared the Philippines an independent nation (1946) once more.

In 1946, Congress passed the Rescission Act, stripping Filipinos of the benefits they were promised, replacing the estimated $3 billion in benefits with a single $200 million direct payment to the Philippine government. The Philippine Commonwealth President, Sergio Osmeña, wrote that the allocated $200 million was "inadequate for the payment of the benefits it intends to confer", and it was rejected by the Philippine government. Of the 66 countries allied with the United States during the war, only Filipinos were denied military benefits.  

Between 1946 and 1965, the majority of Filipino immigration was made up of Filipino men who had joined the American Navy and Filipina wives who married American men while stationed at an American base in the Philippines. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act removed national-origin quotas established in 1921, resulting in marked population growth during this period. Between 1965 and 1980, the Filipino population in the U.S. grew exponentially, with many immigrants arriving with professional degrees and English fluency.

Another facet of Filipino immigration, one that spans the 20th century to present day, involves the nursing profession.

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Contributors and Attributions

• Tsuhako, Joy. (Cerritos College)
• Gutierrez, Erika. (Santiago Canyon College)
• Asian Nation (Le) (CC BY-NC-ND) adapted with permission
• Introduction to Sociology (Lumen) (CC By 4.0)
• Introduction to Sociology 2e (OpenStax) (CC BY 4.0)      

Works Cited & Recommended for Further Reading

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