The Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935 established for

Filipino people Filipinos ( tl, Mga Pilipino) are the people who are citizens of or native to the Philippines. The majority of Filipinos today come from various Austronesian ethnolinguistic groups, all typically speaking either Filipino, English and/or other ...

living in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

repatriation Repatriation is the process of returning a thing or a person to its country of origin or citizenship. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as to the pro ...

program. It provided free transportation for Filipino residents of the continental United States who wished to return to the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

but could not afford to do so.

Provisions

The Filipino Repatriation Act provided free one-way transportation for single adults. Such grants were supplemented in some instances by private funds, such as from the California Emergency Relief Association, that paid passage for Filipino children who had been born in the United States so that they could return with their parents. Both the

Tydings–McDuffie Act The Tydings–McDuffie Act, officially the Philippine Independence Act (), is an Act of Congress that established the process for the Philippines, then an American territory, to become an independent country after a ten-year transition period. ...

and the Filipino Repatriation Act halted

family reunification Family reunification is a recognized reason for immigration in many countries because of the presence of one or more family members in a certain country, therefore, enables the rest of the divided family or only specific members of the family to e ...

under U.S. immigration law, forcing many Filipino families to remain separate for a number of years. If they wished to return to the US, the Filipinos were restricted under the quota system established by the Tydings–McDuffie Act which limited the number of Filipinos entering the US to 50 per year.

History

Along with

Guam Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic cent ...

and

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...

, the United States acquired the

from

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

following the

Spanish–American War , partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence , image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = (clock ...

in 1898 and it became

United States territory In the United States, a territory is any extent of region under the sovereign jurisdiction of the federal government of the United States, including all waters (around islands or continental tracts). The United States asserts sovereign rights for ...

. The Jones Act of 1916 made it official policy to grant Philippines independence and the Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934 laid out the timeline and process by which that would happen, with independence fully recognized in ten years. Filipino immigration to the mainland United States started soon after the Philippines became a territory. During the late 19th and early 20th Century, many Asians and Asian-Americans faced discrimination within the United States. Though United States nationals, but not United States citizens. Filipinos were not exempt from this nativist sentiment, particularly on the

West Coast of the United States The West Coast of the United States, also known as the Pacific Coast, Pacific states, and the western seaboard, is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous U.S ...

. Federal and state legislation and other policies that placed limits on Asian-American economic and social lives were applied to Filipinos. The Repatriation Act served as a way to encourage Filipinos to return to the Philippines voluntarily without officially deporting them, and a way for policy makers to act towards domestic sentiment without an international incident.''Filipino Americans''. 2006. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc. The program was largely unsuccessful and transferred fewer than 2,200 Filipinos back to the Philippines, at a time when there were over 45,000 Filipinos reported in the 1930 census in the mainland United States. In the October 3, 1938 issue of ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'', an article entitled "Philippine Flop" reported that 1,900 Filipinos had returned to the Philippines. This failure has often been attributed to the fact that if any Filipino wished to return to the US during the tenure of this program then they would be facing an uphill battle against a quota of only 50 Filipinos allowed into the US per year. This act was deemed unconstitutional by the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

in 1940 after 2,190 Filipinos had returned to the Philippines. It was succeeded by the Nationality Act of 1940.

References

{{Immigration to the United States Filipino-American history Legal history of the Philippines

Provisions

History

See also

References