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Moments in Time with Bill Ong Hing

Our numbers, past and present

Recent census figures reveal remarkable growth in API communities over the past decade. Nationwide, a 10-year increase from 2.9 percent to about 4 percent of the total population is very significant, and in a state such as California we are 11 percent, after increasing by an amazing one million people. The largest groups are Filipino Americans and Chinese Americans, who are also predominantly foreign-born. This type of immigration-driven growth was not always the case.

Consider the earlier Chinese American population. With no restrictions on immigration in the mid-1800s, thousands of Chinese laborers were able to emigrate to the West. In 1882, for example, the last year before the Exclusion Act banned Chinese laborers, about 40,000 Chinese immigrants were admitted. The Chinese American population of 35,000 in 1860 increased to almost 65,000 in 1870, and to over 100,000 by 1880. By 1884, only 279 Chinese were able to enter, and in 1888, only 10.

The exclusion laws resulted in a decline in the Chinese American population to about 85,000 in 1920. The decline was due to a number of factors. Conventional families could not be formed because in 1890, Chinese American men outnumbered women 27 to 1. Anti-miscegenation laws in states such as California and Oregon barred Chinese from marrying whites. Thousands of Chinese who traveled to China to visit families after the exclusion laws passed had their reentry permits cancelled.

The loosening of the exclusion laws during World War II eventually prompted significant changes in Chinese immigration patterns and the population. Coupled with the extension of non-quota status to wives of citizens, the 1943 repeal of Chinese exclusion laws made family reunification possible. Between 1946 and 1965, the Chinese American population nearly tripled in size from about 125,000 to 360,000, and more than half was American-born.

The Japanese American population, on the other hand, has never declined. After Chinese exclusion was enacted, Japanese workers were recruited to the Hawaii and the mainland. More than 130,000 Japanese immigrated between 1901 and 1910. The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1908 limited, but did not totally bar, Japanese laborers, and permitted spouses and children as well. Although the number of Japanese migrants decreased, the Japanese American population increased, largely because family formation was possible. In 1910, the ratio of Japanese men to women was 7 to 1, and by 1920 it was less than 2 to 1. Every decade after 1900, the Japanese American population grew, expanding from 85,000 to almost 600,000 in 1970, far more than the 436,000 Chinese Americans at the time.

After the Gentlemen’s Agreement slowed Japanese immigration, employers in Hawaii and the mainland recruited Filipinos who could travel freely because the Philippines had been taken over by the United States in 1898, after the Spanish-American War. Although only 2,700 Filipino Americans lived in the United States in 1910, by 1920, there were 26,600 — virtually all of them working in the fields of Hawaii. In the 1920s, recruitment of Filipino workers to the mainland was stepped up, and by 1930, the census reported a quadrupling of the population to 108,500 Filipino Americans. The Philippine Independence Act passed in 1934 ended the freedom to enter the United States and imposed an immigration quota of 50 per year. By the 1940, census the population had decreased by 10 percent to 98,400, about the size of the Chinese American population.

Quota exemptions for family reunification after 1946 sharply increased the immigration by Philippine women and children as newly naturalized husbands and fathers petitioned to reunify their families. In spite of modest immigration figures before 1965, the population increased to 123,000 in 1950 and to 176,000 in 1960, largely because of American births.